Straight Out of View (Barnard New Women Poets Series)

"Joyce Sutphen's first collection reveals a poet of place whose assured, straightforward style seems sprung from the Minnesota farmlands where she was raised."—Publishers WeeklyAwarded the 1994 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, these poems are alive with motion, poems in the act of transformation even as the words fly onto the page. While rooted in the Midwest, the poems extend far beyond the homegrown, moving from the sudden disaster of "Tornado Warning" to sweeping landscapes of the American West to London, where in gentler tones she confronts Sylvia Plath. Sutphen's voice is refreshing throughout, capturing emotion with swift imagistic strokes.Joyce Sutphen teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota.CrossroadsThe second half of my life will be blackto the white rind of the old and fading moon.The second half of my life will be waterover the cracked floor of these desert years.I will land on my feet this time,knowing at least two languages and whomy friends are. I will dress for theoccasion, and my hair shall bewhatever color I please.Everyone will go on celebrating the oldbirthday, counting the years as usual,but I will count myself new from thisinception, this imprint of my own desire.The second half of my life will be swift,past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,fingers shifting through fine sands,arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.There will be new dreams every night,and the drapes will never be closed.I will toss my string of keys into a deepwell and old letters into the grate.The second half of my life will be icebreaking up on the river, rainsoaking the fields, a handheld out, a fire,and smoke going upward, always up.

Literature & Fiction

Sutphen, Joyce

Poetry

Beacon Pr

Poems describe farm life, the Grand Canyon, Vietnam, Sylvia Plath, childhood, work, and nature

A luminous collection of modern metaphysical poems. This Long Winter&nbsp;contains poems that are meditations on life in the rural world: reflections on hard work, aging, and the ravages of time--erasures that Sutphen attempts to ameliorate with her careful attention to language. These poems move us from delight in precise description to wisdom and solace in the things of this world. Noticing its details, the snowflakes, clementines, the lilies, the cardinal's call, is the key for this momentary stay against time that comes at us in a rush. The many mirror images in these poems point to the complexity and hard, loving work of really living in the world. And now, in the deep mid-winter, deep in the enforced slowdown of this pandemic, we need these poems to help us know what to do with the past and how to live and how to love. &nbsp; &nbsp;

This Long Winter (The Cox Family Poetry Chapbook Series)

Carnegie-Mellon University Press

That Other Life (Carnegie Mellon University Press Poetry Series)

Many of the poems in Naming the Stars are about the difficulty of balancing the desires of one self with those of another and the problem of solving the arguments between the body and the soul. The collection's perspective often shifts as the poet wonders how to tell a story that she is not certain she understands even as she lives it, but she finds solace in the sonnet and near-sonnet, giving the volume a recurring shape and a sequential thread. This is Sutphen's third book of poems and it is a change, both in style and subject matter: the poems here are more immediate and revealing emotionally, and the language (lean and complex) matches this intensity.
Naming the Stars
This present tragedy will eventually turn into myth, and in the mist of that later telling the bell tolling now will be a symbol, or, at least, a sign of something long since lost.
This will be another one of those loose changes, the rearrangement of hearts, just parts of old lives patched together, gathered into a dim constellation, small consolation.
Look, we will say, you can almost see the outline there: her fingertips touching his, the faint fusion of two bodies breaking into light.
Joyce Sutphen's first book of poetry, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women's Poets Prize (Beacon Press, 1995) and was recently republished by Holy Cow! Press (2001). Her second book of poems, Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, and other journals. She has read her work on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion. Ms. Sutphen's awards include the Eunice Tietjen's Memorial Prize from Poetry magazine, a Loft-McKnight Artist Fellowship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, and grants from the Jerome Foundation. She holds a Ph.D in Renaissance Drama and teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.

Naming the Stars: Poems

History & Criticism

Holy Cow! Press

"Joyce Sutphen's first collection reveals a poet of place whose assured, straightforward style seems sprung from the Minnesota farmlands where she was raised."—Publishers Weekly
Awarded the 1994 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, these poems are alive with motion, poems in the act of transformation even as the words fly onto the page. While rooted in the Midwest, the poems extend far beyond the homegrown, moving from the sudden disaster of "Tornado Warning" to sweeping landscapes of the American West to London, where in gentler tones she confronts Sylvia Plath. Sutphen's voice is refreshing throughout, capturing emotion with swift imagistic strokes.
Joyce Sutphen teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota.
Crossroads
The second half of my life will be black to the white rind of the old and fading moon. The second half of my life will be water over the cracked floor of these desert years. I will land on my feet this time, knowing at least two languages and who my friends are. I will dress for the occasion, and my hair shall be whatever color I please. Everyone will go on celebrating the old birthday, counting the years as usual, but I will count myself new from this inception, this imprint of my own desire.
The second half of my life will be swift, past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder, asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road. The second half of my life will be wide-eyed, fingers shifting through fine sands, arms loose at my sides, wandering feet. There will be new dreams every night, and the drapes will never be closed. I will toss my string of keys into a deep well and old letters into the grate.
The second half of my life will be ice breaking up on the river, rain soaking the fields, a hand held out, a fire, and smoke going upward, always up.

Straight Out of View

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Straight out of view: Poems by Joyce Sutphen

"Scenes of the family farm, Paris, London, a dying marriage, stories of plain exaltation and ordinary weariness, seen with a clear and compassionate eye-it eases your heart to read Joyce Sutphen."-Garrisonn Keillor
"Keenly attentive, quietly ruthless-Coming Back to the Body is a work of hard groundings, rocky losses, cherished recoveries. This deeply rooted American book homesteads memories, harvests the present, and radiates a rare heart knowledge."-Edward Hirsch
"Joyce Sutphen is a modern metaphysical poet. The elegance and originality of her wit recall Marvell, Donne, Shakespeare, through her subjects-memory, love, family, death-are timeless. Her poems are like still lifes that refuse to be still. One is charmed. One is hypnotized. The poems in Coming Back to the Body are so various that whatever we seek we will find: consolation, enlightenment, undiluted delight."-Connie Wanek
Photosynthesis
Morning falls out of its orbit and swims up through the blue. Last night, when I heard the news, I forgot my human hunger.
Now I am making calculations with a row of ivy and old hibiscus. I am silent as a shadow in the ferns, I am frond green and curled.
It may be necessary to drink through the roots; I could eat sunlight and air, start a green factory in each finger; I could make each arm a branch.
Let me begin as stem and leaf. I'll make something you can breathe.

Coming Back to the Body: Poems

Joyce Sutphen's evocations of life on a small farm, coming of age in the late 1960s, and traveling and searching for balance in a very modern world are both deeply personal and familiar. Readers from Maine to Minnesota and beyond will recognize themselves, their parents, aunts and uncles, and neighbors in these poems, which move us from delight in keen description toward something like wisdom or solace in the things of this world. In addition to poems selected from the last twenty-five years, Carrying Water to the Field includes more than forty new poems on the themes of luck, hard work, and the ravages of time--erasures that Sutphen attempts to ameliorate with her careful attention to language and lyrical precision.&nbsp; &nbsp;

Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems (Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry)

University Of Nebraska Press

Joyce Sutphen grew up on a working dairy farm, and her poems recover this lost world, with all its beauty and order. This collection traces a shift in the rural landscape from horses to tractors, from haystacks to hay bales—and watches as time ages and changes the people who make up the story. First Words is both elegy and celebration—ultimately its center is family, then and now.

First Words

Red Dragonfly Press

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Books by Sutphen, Joyce

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sutphen, Joyce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Straight Out of View (Barnard New Women Poets Series)

Straight Out of View (Barnard New Women Poets Series)

This Long Winter (The Cox Family Poetry Chapbook Series)

That Other Life (Carnegie Mellon University Press Poetry Series)

Naming the Stars: Poems

Straight Out of View

Straight out of view: Poems by Joyce Sutphen

Coming Back to the Body: Poems

Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems (Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry)

First Words