Murder in the Stacks

Havighurst, Marion

Literature & Fiction

Miami Univ

People Live, They Have Lives: Poems (The Miami University Poetry Series)

Do these poems struggle? driven to the language that cannot change a life - until it does. Or as might be said: poetry doesn't care about us.At the same time, the syntactical object interests endlessly. At first an almost believable order. Then, one sees (hears) that it fails. The transparent now opaque - like the centipede who cannot walk for thinking on its legs.And how rescue the self (=form) from the myriad permutations? How purge the dark with sun? Silence will not do, though not the worst solution and an obvious temptation.And so love, death, and rebirth are said over and over, as they have been said over and over, because the speaker knows nothing else to say. Until Father speaks from his grave, until senile Mother transmits his voice - as thus, in fact, the orders are called forth. Until the poem lumbers up on their high-octaine psychic fuel.

Seidman, Hugh

Hugh Seidman's first book of poetry, Collecting Evidence, was chosen by Stanley Kunitz for the 1970 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize. In People Live, They Have Lives, Seidman continues his unflinching exploration of the human condition while avoiding the discursive trappings of much contemporary poetry. The precise use of language in the poem "Mouse" underscores his talent and skill: "Delicate elephant ears./ Pointed fox snout./ Chicken feet that scratched/ where the stove cable goes from his world to this one." Many of his poems are tender and austere explorations of age and of the relationship between a son and his parents: "What does a mother dream in a Brooklyn nursing home?/ Days measured by the Atlantic./ Each day like each day." (from "The Senile") and "What will a father will?  Nothing but a son./ A face beside itself in the bedside shaving mirror." (from "Hospital"). The full range of Hugh Seidman's work may be sampled in  Selected Poems: 1965-1995.

Poetry

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Books by Miami Univ

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Murder in the Stacks

People Live, They Have Lives: Poems (The Miami University Poetry Series)

People Live, They Have Lives: Poems (The Miami University Poetry Series)