New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 - Softcover

Shapiro, Karl Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226750337 ISBN 13: 9780226750330

Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr, 1987

About this title

Reviews

Scion of the Auden-Spender-MacNeice school of public poetry that came of age nearly half a century ago, Shapiro is a major American poet of a lost era who has been treated most unfairly by time and the whims of fashion. But the wonder and the value of this version of his selected poems, revised from the edition published a generation ago, are in its final but few, nearly perfect new poems. Here the poet-chronicler of World War II and postwar society in Americathat polished, elegant and smooth commentator on the hypocrisies, prejudices and delusions of our common lifebrings himself into our future with exact and telling descriptions of "Vietnam Memorial," "Retirement" and his elegy "At Auden's Grave." He rounds his own achievement. All the well-known Shapiro classics that precede these ultimate poems bleed their life and our history into their meaning. As for Auden's grave, Shapiro makes it into a symbol for the centuryits progress, its struggles, its conscience. This is not a redundant selection of Shapiro's poems. On the contrary, it is a completed one, full of compassion and purpose.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Admirers of Shapiro's work will welcome this volume of poems selected by the poet himself from over 50 years' work. Shapiro is a craftsman with an eye for detail. In poems such as "Drug Store," "Haircut," and "The Tingling Back," he finds cause for personal celebration in the most quotidian occurrences; yet he is equally adept at probing more public subjects in "The Conscientious Objector," "Israel" and "Vietnam Memorial." It would have been helpful if the poems had been dated and/or had included an indication of which book they were selected from; but despite that shortcoming, readers will find these Selected Poems a treasure. Grace Bauer, formerly with New Orleans
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226750337
• ISBN 13: 9780226750330
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 103