Selected Poems - Softcover

Halpern, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679765654 ISBN 13: 9780679765653

Publisher: Knopf, 1994

Synopsis

This generous selection from Daniel Halpern's seven previous volumes represents more than two decades of work. Finding a poetry in the dailiness of human experience, Halpern reaches into the least-known corners of the heart, with an ambition to transmute the occasions of life -- friendship, loss, isolation, love, and death -- into the melody of consciousness. Notable for their poise, lyric intensity, formal aptitude, and uncanny evocations of place and states of mind, these poems yield something special in their apparent simplicity.

From the restless youthful investigations of his first volume of poems, Traveling on Credit, to the more seasoned, penetrating vision of Tango and Foreign Neon, Halpern's inventions are graced by what Derek Walcott has praised as "the intimacy of a man talking honestly with himself." This collection illustrates the evolution of an authentic American voice whose power to delight and instruct is as undeniable as its mandate to disturb. A magnificent achievement.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Halpern was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1945 and has lived in Los Angeles, Seattle, New York City, and Tangier, Morocco. He is the editor of Antaeus and of the Ecco Press, and a recipient of many grants and awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Halpern teaches in the graduate writing program of Columbia University and divides his time between New York City and Princeton, New Jersey, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

From the Back Cover

"The way Mr. Halpern feels around inside his poems is...so free and effortless and unerring -- exploring all the strange corners, touching strange blooms and surprising corals in a submarine grotto, then coming up for air without a ripple. The personal poems -- the autobiographical surgical probings -- are very moving, painfully so m places, very pure. And the finger-testing of old wounds, old encysted shrapnel fragments. I could read a whole autobiography of those. And what a book it would be -- full of those mesmeric noticings (like 'Stazione') and curlings up, and scorpion tails, of old snapshots (like 'Coffee'). I love the way he dances through that last supper ('House of Flame') -- his sacrament of care, touching everything with a fringe of sun-glow or moon-glow. Till it's all prepared and in place."
-- Ted Hughes

"Daniel Halpern's poems are remarkable for their quiet -- the intimacy of a man talking honestly to himself...His lines break with the gentle snap of a twig, with natural poignancy. His range is not narrow; it achieves width by concentration. The quality of memory that Halpern strives after in poem after poem and which he repeatedly achieves is that nod of agreement which truth gives to experience, whether of praise or of pain."
-- Derek Walcott

"Daniel Halpern has such a strangely disturbing sense of place that somehow becomes internal rather than descriptive, while at the same time physically evocative -- something deeply sad. These poems speak to me in the best, most private way, as I always feel poetry should."
-- Nadine Gordimer

From the Inside Flap

s selection from Daniel Halpern's seven previous volumes represents more than two decades of work. Finding a poetry in the dailiness of human experience, Halpern reaches into the least-known corners of the heart, with an ambition to transmute the occasions of life -- friendship, loss, isolation, love, and death -- into the melody of consciousness. Notable for their poise, lyric intensity, formal aptitude, and uncanny evocations of place and states of mind, these poems yield something special in their apparent simplicity.

From the restless youthful investigations of his first volume of poems, Traveling on Credit, to the more seasoned, penetrating vision of Tango and Foreign Neon, Halpern's inventions are graced by what Derek Walcott has praised as "the intimacy of a man talking honestly with himself." This collection illustrates the evolution of an authentic American voice whose power to delight and instruct is as undeniable as its mandate t

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreign Neon

Consider a landscape of winter,
         snow on the hill, ice
    along the roads
            a fire throwing heat into a room

and blue smoke into a low-hung, damp afternoon air.
         But it remains summer here
    in the foothills
            and you've grown sleepy, tired

of so many endless afternoons
         with only a book and glass
    of mediocre wine, what's local
            here. You've said well

what you have to say and have given over
         what you have to give.
    You like to think there's something endless
            in what's still to be discovered.

Consider distance, other locations, long flights
         to high-contrast cities
    lit-up at night in foreign neon.
            Will it be enough?

She wakened you out of inventive dreaming,
         took a cool cloth to your head,
     brought to the room
            this glass of cool water?

And what do you dream here Mr.
         Domestic, living the life
    as if this life were something rustic,
            more than just one time around?

This isn't a dress rehearsal,
         your mother said, quoting,
    from one rustic source or another.
            You dream the habitable dreams,

you dream the dream of co-habitation,
         one good woman, one address,
    a life worth repeating day by day.
            And the glass of cool water?--

it comes to room temperature and remains
         untouched, leaving a colorless ring
    on the wormwood nightstand, the woman's
            face in shadow, one hand

on the white sheet, looking deeply into the inevitability
         of her future, the rising sun
    tattooing the noticeable smooth surface of
            her cheek, a color akin to foreign neon.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679765654
• ISBN 13: 9780679765653
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1