- Hardcover: 264 pages
- Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (Nov 1 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0226514471
- ISBN-13: 978-0226514475
- Product Dimensions: 22.5 x 16.1 x 2.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 522 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,466,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"A ''new and selected'' collection of poetry affords the reader many pleasures a single volume of poetry rarely does. Looming large among these is the chance to track the writer’s growth as an artist. And, because of the broader
canvas, one might get from a “new and selected” group of poems a firmer sense of the writer’s preoccupations in theme and subject matter. Probably the greatest pleasure, however, is the chance to pin down what has drawn one to the work time and again. This became apparent to me as I read the nearly three hundred pages of Zeppo’s First Wife by Gail Mazur, a ''new and selected'' collection that gathers twenty-two new poems and a very generous selection from Ms. Mazur’s four previous books. Judging by my marginal notes and underlining, I am invariably taken by the
exquisitely crafted endings of her poems. Book by book, year after year, her poems startle and move the reader with their capacity to end on a note that belongs to her and no one else. Gail Mazur, it seems, is a master of poetic closure. . . . I think the endings of Gail Mazur''s poems, no matter how sad, frightened, or perplexed, offer us a luminous quality . . . a quality that marks these new and selected poems from beginning to end."—Fred Marchant, Provincetown Arts
(Fred Marchant Provincetown Arts )canvas, one might get from a “new and selected” group of poems a firmer sense of the writer’s preoccupations in theme and subject matter. Probably the greatest pleasure, however, is the chance to pin down what has drawn one to the work time and again. This became apparent to me as I read the nearly three hundred pages of Zeppo’s First Wife by Gail Mazur, a ''new and selected'' collection that gathers twenty-two new poems and a very generous selection from Ms. Mazur’s four previous books. Judging by my marginal notes and underlining, I am invariably taken by the
exquisitely crafted endings of her poems. Book by book, year after year, her poems startle and move the reader with their capacity to end on a note that belongs to her and no one else. Gail Mazur, it seems, is a master of poetic closure. . . . I think the endings of Gail Mazur''s poems, no matter how sad, frightened, or perplexed, offer us a luminous quality . . . a quality that marks these new and selected poems from beginning to end."—Fred Marchant, Provincetown Arts
"We dream of living on poetry''s high ground, the giddy air and wide prospect that distance us from the drear of everyday life. Yet the brisk, eloquent, and quirky poems of Gail Mazur''s Zeppo''s First Wife may prove that there is more oxygen at ground level. Mazur finds a magic in the everyday, the delights and disorders that characterize a postmodern and multi-everything America."—David Gewanter, Tikkun
(David Gewanter Tikkun ) “Audacity and modesty: In Mazur''s work, those apparent opposites reveal their secret kinship: Modesty from its place on the sidelines can see through the conventional sham of the rules, and audacity has the confidence to embrace the plain, ordinary truth. In the face of demons or emptiness, Mazur offers a song...Part of the pleasure in these poems is their simultaneous large scope and measured, deceptively quiet voice."”—Robert Pinsky, “Poet’s Choice,” Washington Post
Product Description
from Enormously Sad
. . . Sad, so sad-compared to what?
To your earlier more oblivious state?
It never was oblivious enough-
always those presentiments of sadness
prickling the limbic. Now a voice says, Get outside
yourself, go walk on the flats. The tide's gone out—
but your little metal detector will detect little metallic coins
of enormous sadness in the teeming wet sand,
and then, the tide will come back, erasing, cleansing!
And you, standing there in the salty scouring air-
will you still be enormously sad,
While the other world, outside your tiny purview, struck
by iron, reels? World of intentional iron, pure savage
organized iron of the world, it hasn't the time
that you have for your puny enormous sadness.
Widely acclaimed for expanding the stylistic boundaries of both the narrative and meditative lyric, Gail Mazur’s poetry crackles with verbal invention as she confronts the inevitable upheavals of a lived life. Zeppo’s First Wife, which includes excerpts from Mazur’s four previous books, as well as twenty-two new poems, is epitomized by the worldly longing of the title poem, with its searching poignancy and comic bravura. Mazur’s explorations of “this fallen world, this loony world” are deeply moving acts of empathy by a singular moral sensibility—evident from the earliest poem included here, the much-anthologized “Baseball,” a stunning bird’s-eye view of human foibles and passions. Clear-eyed, full of paradoxical griefs and appetites, her poems brave the most urgent subjects—from the fraught luscious Eden of the ballpark, to the fragility of our closest human ties, to the implications for America in a world where power and war are cataclysmic for the strong as well as the weak.
(20060801)
. . . Sad, so sad-compared to what?
To your earlier more oblivious state?
It never was oblivious enough-
always those presentiments of sadness
prickling the limbic. Now a voice says, Get outside
yourself, go walk on the flats. The tide's gone out—
but your little metal detector will detect little metallic coins
of enormous sadness in the teeming wet sand,
and then, the tide will come back, erasing, cleansing!
And you, standing there in the salty scouring air-
will you still be enormously sad,
While the other world, outside your tiny purview, struck
by iron, reels? World of intentional iron, pure savage
organized iron of the world, it hasn't the time
that you have for your puny enormous sadness.
Widely acclaimed for expanding the stylistic boundaries of both the narrative and meditative lyric, Gail Mazur’s poetry crackles with verbal invention as she confronts the inevitable upheavals of a lived life. Zeppo’s First Wife, which includes excerpts from Mazur’s four previous books, as well as twenty-two new poems, is epitomized by the worldly longing of the title poem, with its searching poignancy and comic bravura. Mazur’s explorations of “this fallen world, this loony world” are deeply moving acts of empathy by a singular moral sensibility—evident from the earliest poem included here, the much-anthologized “Baseball,” a stunning bird’s-eye view of human foibles and passions. Clear-eyed, full of paradoxical griefs and appetites, her poems brave the most urgent subjects—from the fraught luscious Eden of the ballpark, to the fragility of our closest human ties, to the implications for America in a world where power and war are cataclysmic for the strong as well as the weak.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A RICH AND GENEROUS GIFT, Nov 2 2006
By A reader - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Zeppo's First Wife: New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)
Zeppo's First Wife--eloquent, warm, urgent, funny--is a generous gift, offering several books in one: the complete text of the National Book Award finalist You Can't Take That Away from Me (2001), the complete text of The Common (1995), and a selection of both new and earlier poems that make this an especially rich "new and selected." The work arranges the books in reverse chronological order, ending with only one poem--the much-anthologized "Baseball"--from Mazur's first collection. The result is hauntingly like watching a film of the poet's life and mind rewind, as figures grieved in the more recent poems appear in earlier ones, and as the profoundly mature poet reveals the earlier excursions of her careful observations and probing mind. With unfailingly sure music and complex yet clear syntax, Mazur takes on the most deeply disturbing emotions ("I'm afraid of grief, and I mean to enter it fully"), questioning, exploring, refusing the solace of art or easy answers as she chronicles a quickly disappearing present and follows memory into a vividly detailed past. If reading Gail Mazur's poetry doesn't change your life, it may change the way you look at the world and think about your experiences.
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