eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
Irving Feldman is a master chronicler of our collective experience and an overlooked treasure of American poetry. Feldman’s rich body of work exhibits his mastery of language from the biblical to the conversational, his Yiddish flair for the comic, his profound social insight and lucidity. He writes about everything from the Coney Island days of his childhood
and his bohemian years in postwar New York to the art of Picasso and George Segal, from the Holocaust to its aftermath—in narrative and dramatic poems and personal lyrics that are by turns ardent, witty, biting, ecstatic, and heartbreaking.
Long a favorite among his fellow poets (John Hollander has called his work “amazing in its moral intensity”), Feldman has remained true to the soul’s deepest callings:
I have questioned myself aloud
at night in a voice I did not
recognize, hurried and
disobedient, hardly brighter.
What have I kept? Nothing.
Not bread or the bread-word.
What have I offered? Rebel
in the kingdom, my gift
has wanted a grace.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307517906 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 01/16/2009 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 464 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
"The Prophet"
I am your stone. I seek the center.
Lean back, bend over, I know one way.
You cannot move. I weigh. I weigh.
I am your doom. Your city shall not burn.
The flood has gone by, the fever passed.
Get home. Empty the square
As your hearts are empty. Only I am there.
Everywhere. I bring all things down.
Your eyes wander to the ground.
You yearn for density, the solid,
You want blocks, you want the hardest matter:
Clay will not do; granite, not marble.
Your souls crave no room. All is brought together.
You shall be as stone and wedge yourselves down.
Where all things are one.
"Non-Being"
And all about him rock—with heavy grayness as of a sigh.
And yet Prometheus saw the sardonic humor of the place,
How the mountains tilted back their heads against the sky
And twisted out a smile; a smile passed on his face.
After a thousand years he thought he saw the joke,
And began, almost nostalgically, to giggle; even his joints
Felt a certain lightness, it took so little to provoke
A knee, merely, say, the wryness of two opposing points.
Another aeon passed and he laughed outright;
He felt himself, in fact, the universal satirist,
The final glittering of the rictus of cosmic spite.
So nothing really mattered; and his mirth bubbled off in mist.
What terrible cackle bounds blatant through the vale?
O come to the mountain and see a suit of clothes on a nail!
"Arabian Night"
This place, these women talking after dinner,
before they rise to bless goodnight, I should
know them, their stories of the past: sorrows,
children, the dead; those very tales, yes!
sisters, mother, aunt, still as they were,
at the white table in the darkening room
—genies of familial memory, who,
convened, becalmed, by nearness and the night,
rub from a boy’s tender pride or impudence,
or cousin’s guile, or uncles’ merriment
—so innocent, so unredeemed!—
a steady, timid spell against the night.
And I who sit like night at the window
and cannot enter except I become a child
—that light has gone, they cannot conjure him,
not for all their burnished hearts’ lamp!
In other lands, striving in chains, he builds
but cannot grow; and I have come in his stead.
And here one is, Time’s prosaic Sinbad
returned from dull adventures in the years,
ancient changeling, impostor of a life,
—my treasure flotsam, debased, befouled,
I cannot ransom forth the light, or save
this drifted past abandoned on a hill.
Become the porter of my history,
what can I do but toss this black bag down,
share the relics I’ve got, knock, return,
like any prodigal—holding out
tarnished gifts to strangers: some guilt,
merely sentimental; a little childish loyalty;
a little useless pity.
Table of Contents
From WORKS AND DAYS (1961)The Prophet 3
Non-Being 3
Arabian Night 4
A Poet 5
Goya 6
The Lost Language 9
From THE PRIPET MARSHES (1965)
Prologue 13
Artist and Model 14
“Portrait de Femme” 19
In Time of Troubles 20
The Messengers 21
The Double 22
The Return 22
Scene of a Summer Morning 24
The Pripet Marshes 24
To the Six Million 27
Song 32
From MAGIC PAPERS (1970)
Magic Papers 35
The Word 42
Psalm 43
Colloquy 43
Girl Singing 44
Dressing Hornpout 45
Four Passages 48
Dunkerque 1951 55
The Father 56
The Heir 59
Reredos Showing the Assumption into Heaven of Frank O’Hara 59
Seeing Red 61
The Warriors and the Idiots 64
Night and the Maiden 65
Elegy for a Suicide 65
To Waken You with Your Name 68
From LOST ORIGINALS (1972)
As Fast as You Can 73
The Titanic 74
My Olson Elegy 75
Hump 77
The Jumping Children 81
Morton’s Dream 82
The Marvel Was Disaster 84
X 85
Birth Day 91
The Party 92
Rue Gît-le-Coeur 93
The Tenor 95
After the Flight from Rockaway 96
Our Leaders 97
Meeting in Lyon 99
A Balcony in Barcelona 100
Six Sailors 101
Bembú a su amada 103
To S., Underground 106
Waking Words 108
From LEAPING CLEAR (1976)
The Handball Players at Brighton Beach 111
Was. Weasel. Isn’t. Is 112
Stanzas: The Master’s Voice 115
Beethoven’s Bust 117
Leaping Clear 123
An Era of Laughter
125 The Prodigal 126
The Good Life 126
Who’s Who (and What’s What) 128
Antonio, Botones 129
The Secret Work 132
Egg 133
Father and Son 136
The Thief of Poetry 137
Avenue of the Americas 138
The City and Its Own 139
A Player’s Notes 141
A Tale of a Needler and a Nailer 142
The Golden Schlemiel 144
This Way to the Egress 151
Sons et Lumières 152
The Gift of Life 152
From NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (1979)
The Thousand Nights and the One Night 155
The Ecstasies 155
Three Tales 156
Family History 159
Cloud of Brightness 162
Rowing on the Acheron 163
The Human Circle 165
From Elegies 168
Ever After 176
The Tortoise 178
From TEACH ME, DEAR SISTER (1983)
Millions of Strange Shadows 181
The Bathers 181
They 186
A Crone’s Tale 187
Eberheim 190
The Biographies of Solitude 191
In Old San Juan 192
The Salon of Famous Babies 194
Beauty 196
To What’s-Her-Name 196
Albert Feinstein 197
The Drowned Man 199
Teach Me, Dear Sister 199
Just Another Smack 203
Fresh Air 204
The All-Stars 208
Read to the Animals, or Orpheus at the SPCA 209
Conversation on a Yam 212
Elena 215
The Memorable 216
The Epiphanies 216
Happiness 217
The Grand Magic Theater Finale 218
Talking to Fernando 219
ALL OF US HERE (1986)
All of Us Here 223
Oh, it’s all so 223
Or this might be Oafland 223
Oh, here and there 225
Of course, we would wish 227
They were not alive 227
Or perhaps it’s really theater 229
The bystander at the massacre 231
The whirlwind we wouldn’t enter 233
Surely they’re just so large 234
Native soil, we say 235
Dust, pallor, drabness 236
Alone, alive in a tomb 238
Lovely times, heroic 240
—It’s obvious obvious 241
The light that took the snapshot 242
Simple outlines, human shapes 243
Stretched out at length 243
This couple strolling here 245
Did they love one another? 246
They say to us 248
Our Father 249 River 250
An Atlantiad 252
The Judgment of Diana 254
Summer’s Sublet 259
The Call 262
The Flight from the City 263
Art of the Haiku 276
From THE LIFE AND LETTERS (1994)
The Dream 279
The Life and Letters 279
Immortality 282
Street Scene 285
The Runners 288
Warm Enough 289
Only Then 292
Story 295
The Affair 297
Variations on a Theme by May Swenson 297
The Little Children of Hamelin 300
Malke Toyb 305
The Knot 306
In the Manger 306
Good Morning America 307
Outrage Is Anointed by Levity, or Two Laureates A-lunching 310
No Big Deal 313
In Theme Park America 314
The Celebrities 319
Interrupted Prayers 320
West Street 325
The Girlfriend 326
Even in Eden 327
She Knows 328
Widow 328
After Empires 329
In the Mental Ward, 331
Poem of the Old Avant-Garde 332
Adventures in the Postmodern Era 334
WWI (Writing While Under the Influence) 335
Terminal Laughs 336
Kiss and Tell 338
Small Talk for a Sage 342
How Wonderful 343
Fragment 344
From BEAUTIFUL FALSE THINGS (2000)
The Recognitions 347
Voluptas 347
“Sono un poeta . . . Scrivo” 348
Beautiful False Things 351
Solange Mistral 357
Testing the Waters 358
These Memoirs 358
Laura Among the Shades 359
Lives of the Poets 359
Wisdom (Not for Beginners) 363
Honors! Prizes! Awards! Etc.! 365
Oedipus Host 365
Desiring Power Where Surrender Failed 371
The Switch 372
Tantrum 373
Of This and That, and the Other, and the Fall of Man 373
Cartoons 375
Words Out of Place 376
The Lowdown 378
Joker 378
Heavenly Muse 379
Les grandes passions manquées 385
Bad Brunch 385
Episode 387
Bust-up 388
City of Good Neighbors Blues 389
They Say and They Repeat 391
The Parting 391
You Know What I’m Saying? 391
Funny Bones, or Larry Dawn’s 1001 Nights in Condolandia 392
The Retirement 398
Praising Opens 400
NEW AND UNCOLLECTED POEMS
For J.M., His Poems 403
Speed of Words 403
Dance in the Dark 403
Briseis 404
Came to Nothing 405
Poem with Refrain 405
Say Pardon 406
Fifteen Minutes 406
Chaos Theory, or Karmic Chutzpah 406
State of the Union 407
The Needy Rich Are Always with Us 407
Ideologue 407 Don’t You Admire Me? 408
[Sic] Transcript Gloria, or The Body Politician 408
When the Lion Dies 409
Gigsburg 409
The Return of the Repressed 409
Happening 410
The Interruption 412
Prometheus at Fourteen 414
Old Ivy and Arsenic 415
Man with Blue Catarrh 415
The Brother 416
Culprit Conscience 417
The Weakest Hands Seize the Heaviest Ax 419
Arslan & Arpad: On the Question of Craft 419
To a Grave, Unquietly 420
Old Wife Tale 421
Versions of Proteus 421
Notes 423
Index of First Lines 427
Index of Titles 433