Any body's song

Langland, Joseph

DOUBLEDAY

Selected Poems

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

University of Massachusetts Press

A collection of poems that look at everyday life.

A dozen of the author's and editor's favorite poems from his previous books were selected and the author wrote a prose comment telling the story behind or the history of each of the twelve poems. "The history of any poem is a curious combination of experience, sensibility, contemporary climate, craft, and desire. Any variable here begets a different poem. What happens to any given poem after its publication in magazines, books, and in following texts and anthologies--as well as after oral readings by the author and others--is often surprising. This is because in any good poem the response is seldom related solely to the ideas but to the emotion created around the ideas. That is the tricky catalyst which sends the poem on. this book of TWELVE is about what came before and what has happened after each of them. Not all of it, of course; just a few brief notices. The poem by itself is what the poem is, but for anyone interested in poetry the preludes and postludes surrounding the poem can have their music also"--from the author's Foreword.

Twelve Poems With Preludes and Postludes

Water Row Pr

Adastra Pr

<p>Poetry. "It was a joy to reread these powerful poems and your comments. It was like going to a poetry reading when the poet talks amply about the poems in between them, a custom I always like"--X.J. Kennedy. Joseph Langland was born in Minnesota in 1917, and has been a presence in American poetry for fifty years. He founded the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he lives. This selection of work constitutes a kind of autobiography, reaching through the work to its materials, with a kind of fondness and sadness, and an engaging small vanity.</p>

Twelve Poems with Preludes and Postludes

Adastra Press

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