A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
Earthling confronts our deepest fears in clear and haunting language, from "a poet of extraordinary gifts" (American Academy of Arts and Letters).
"Earthling" is one of the oldest words in the English language, our original word for ploughman, a keeper of the earth. In poems simultaneously ordinary and otherworldly, James Longenbach traces the life of a modern-day earthling as he looks squarely at his little patch of earth and at the vast emptiness of interstellar space. Beginning with the death of the earthling’s mother and ending with a confrontation with his own mortality, the poems within Earthling resist complaint or agitation. In them, the real and the imagined, the material and the allegorical, intersect at shifting angles and provide fresh perspectives and lasting consolation.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
James Longenbach is the author of four previous volumes of poetry and six volumes of literary criticism, and his work is often featured in The New Yorker and the Paris Review. He teaches at the University of Rochester and lives in New York.
“[Earthling] opens with several delightful poems that combine plain-spoken language and imaginative vistas as the speaker begins to explore what it means to live on Earth at this time...Literary references and allegorical narratives add to the surprises in this book, which shifts perceptively in each section yet ultimately reminds readers that 'when you love one thing deeply, a/ person, a place/ Ultimately you love them all.'”
- Elizabeth Lund, Washington Post
“Earthling is a gift―wise, aching, unafraid of pleasure and the less-than-pleasurable things that pleasure may commit us to. The whole thing is both grounded and airborne. A wonderful book.”
- Matthew Bevis, Poetry
“Longenbach gives his readers a route to follow, and its turns are precise.”
- The Millions, Must-Read Poetry Pick
“Longenbach's language remains sparse, calm, and graceful even as his poems confront the finiteness of individual human lives.”
- Publishers Weekly
“More than any poet of his generation, Longenbach adventures a cleanly and generous ambition for the art, constantly mindful of his subject as Matter beyond occasion―Matter to be reverenced and thereby understood. In Earthling, he touches upon glory. His ‘Allegory’ is the finest instance of transcendence in American writing since Ammons’s ‘Easter Morning.’ Every page of this collection merits permanence, a pleasure truly modern now.”
- Donald Revell
“Earthling stuns me with its clarities, it fascinates me to no end. Is it Longenbach’s passionate precision? Is it his absolute unmixed attentiveness that’s akin to prayer? To my mind, Earthling is far more than just another brilliant, elegant book of verse: this is elegance at the edge of the abyss. This is a human voice that has come to the middle of life’s desert to find that “In the middle of the desert / you might be anyone.” Longenbach finds here the crystalline, transformative, pure pitch of a lyric poet: his voice in this book becomes any earthling’s voice. How does he do it? How does he give clarity to the human in us? In another century people used to call this effect visionary work: the poetry of a true mystic.”
- Ilya Kaminsky
“James Longenbach knows as much about how poems work as anyone in the world, but he hides this knowledge behind poems that feel so real and artless they hardly seem composed at all. The poems in Earthling are mythological in their simplicity, and their myth is the inevitable one of an isolated consciousness inhabiting places that might or might not be actual, ‘Moments when the artist in each of use created / The material world by finding the unfamiliar in the familiar.’”
- John Koethe
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
FREE
Within U.S.A.
Shipping:
US$ 2.64
Within U.S.A.
Seller: Better World Books, Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.
Condition: Good. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 15156066-6
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: SecondSale, Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
Condition: Good. Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00045654037
Quantity: 2 available
Seller: ThriftBooks-Atlanta, AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.
Paperback. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.75. Seller Inventory # G0393353435I4N00
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: ThriftBooks-Dallas, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.
Paperback. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.75. Seller Inventory # G0393353435I3N00
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: WorldofBooks, Goring-By-Sea, WS, United Kingdom
Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR009237048
Quantity: 3 available
Seller: GF Books, Inc., Hawthorne, CA, U.S.A.
Condition: Very Good. Book is in Used-VeryGood condition. Pages and cover are clean and intact. Used items may not include supplementary materials such as CDs or access codes. May show signs of minor shelf wear and contain very limited notes and highlighting. Seller Inventory # 0393353435-2-3
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: Book Alley, Pasadena, CA, U.S.A.
paperback. Condition: Very Good. Very Good. Gently used with NO markings in text; binding is tight. Pasadena's finest independent new and used bookstore since 1992. Seller Inventory # mon0000599365
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: GreatBookPrices, Columbia, MD, U.S.A.
Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 29204593-n
Quantity: 5 available
Seller: BargainBookStores, Grand Rapids, MI, U.S.A.
Paperback or Softback. Condition: New. Earthling: Poems 0.31. Book. Seller Inventory # BBS-9780393353433
Quantity: 5 available
Seller: Books Unplugged, Amherst, NY, U.S.A.
Condition: Good. Buy with confidence! Book is in good condition with minor wear to the pages, binding, and minor marks within 0.28. Seller Inventory # bk0393353435xvz189zvxgdd
Quantity: 1 available