Plundered Hearts: New and Selected Poems

Plundered Hearts: New and Selected Poems

by J. D. McClatchy
Plundered Hearts: New and Selected Poems

Plundered Hearts: New and Selected Poems

by J. D. McClatchy

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Overview

A definitive selection of the elegant work by a poet at the forefront of American poetry for more than three decades.

With his first several books, J. D. McClatchy established himself as a poet of urbanity, intellect, and prismatic emotion, in the tradition of James Merrill, W. H. Auden, and Elizabeth Bishop––one who balances an exploration of the underworld of desire with a mastery of poetic form, and whose artistry reveals the riches and ruins of our “plundered hearts.”

Now, opening with exquisite new poems––including the stunning “My Hand Collection,” a catalogue of art objects that steals up on the complexity of human touch, and a witty and profound poem entitled “My Robotic Prostatectomy”––this selection is a glorious full tour of McClatchy’s career. It includes excerpts from the powerful book-length sequence Ten Commandments (1998) and his more recent works Hazmat (2002) and Mercury Dressing (2009)—books that explored the body’s melodrama, as well as the heart’s treacheries, grievances, and boundless capacities.

All of his poems present a sumptuous weave of impassioned thought and clear-sighted feeling. He has been rightly hailed as a poet of “ferocious alertness,” one who elicits (says The New Leader) “the kind of wonder and joy we experience when the curtain comes down on a dazzling performance.”

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780385351522
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 03/25/2014
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 288
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

J. D. McClatchy is the author of seven previous collections of poetry and of three collections of prose. He has edited numerous other books, including The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, and has written a number of opera libretti that have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala, and elsewhere. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where he served as president from 2009 to 2012. McClatchy teaches at Yale University and is editor of The Yale Review.

Table of Contents

New Poems

My Hand Collection 3

Three Poems by Wilhelm Müller 5

Prelude, Delay, and Epitaph 8

The Novelist 10

One Year Later 12

Wolf's Trees 14

Bacon's Easel 15

Palm Beach Sightings 17

Kiss Kiss 18

My Robotic Prostatectomy 19

Two Arias from The Marriage of Figaro 21

His Own Life 33

Cagaloglu 28

from Scenes from Another Life | 1981

Aubade 35

A Winter Without Snow 36

The Tears of the Pilgrims 39

from Stars Principal | 1986

At a Reading 49

The Cup 52

Anthem 54

The Palace Dwarf 55

A Cold in Venice 57

The Lesson in Prepositions 59

Bees 63

Hummingbird 64

Ovid's Farewell 65

from The Rest of the Way | 1990

Medea in Tokyo 73

The Rented House 74

The Shield of Herakles 77

Fog Tropes 80

Heads 87

An Essay on Friendship 90

The Window 108

Kilim 110

from Ten Commandments | 1998

The Ledger 127

My Sideshow 128

My Early Hearts 130

My Old Idols 134

My Mammogram 136

Found Parable 140

Tea With the Local Saint 142

Under Hydra 145

Auden's OED 147

What They Left Behind 153

Proust in Bed 154

Three Dreams About Elizabeth Bishop 158

Late Night Ode 162

from Hazmat | 2002

Fado 167

Glanum 169

Jihad 173

Orchid 175

Cancer 176

Penis 178

Tattoos 182

The Agave 193

The Fever 195

The Infection 196

Late Afternoon, Rome 197

The Bookcase 198

Hotel Bar 199

A Tour of the Volcano 200

Little Elegy 201

Ouija 202

from Mercury Dressing | 2009

Mercury Dressing 211

Er 212

Self-Portrait as Amundsen 216

The Frame 217

Resignation 219

Sorrow in 1944 220

Lingering Doubts 230

Three Overtures 232

Trees, Walking 238

Going Back to Bed 248

Full Cause of Weeping 249

A View of the Sea 252

Notes 257

Acknowledgments 263

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