The Glass House: New Poems - Softcover

Epstein, Daniel Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807134112 ISBN 13: 9780807134115

Publisher: LSU Press, 2009

Synopsis

The poems in Daniel Mark Epstein's eighth poetry collection range from the kind of solid and accomplished works for which he is known to astonishing pieces that are near-spiritual encounters. Always an assured poet, Epstein employs inventive rhythms to remarkable effect in these new poems, and it often seems as if the reader is not so much reading the poems as remembering them. And with the discovery each poem brings, there is a "shock of recognition," as though these elusive yet essential ideas have been present all along. The Glass House is an amazing book -- wonderful in its evocations of nature, encouraging sometimes, often elegiac and even heartbreaking.

About this title

About the Author

One of America's most versatile writers, Daniel Mark Epstein is a poet, biographer, and dramatist whose work has been widely published and performed. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and many other magazines and anthologies. He is the author of seven prize-winning books of poetry and five highly acclaimed biographies, including The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage. His honors include the Rome Prize in 1978, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

From Booklist

Epstein has been the biographer of Aimee Semple McPherson, Nat King Cole, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Abraham Lincoln, so it’s hardly surprising to find here a long, somewhat guilty, compassionate address to Millay and a posterity-minded reverie in the empty hall in which Whitman once delivered a “Lincoln Speech.” But here, too, are a notation of agreement between the modern philosopher Gaston Bachelard and the ancient Empedocles; a version of the story of Abraham and Isaac told by “The Messenger,” who was, recall, an angel; Odysseus’ companion Eurylochos on the dangerous encounter with the Sirens, whom the hero thought he alone heard; an “Advertisement circa 1865” that we are not told is factual but sadly suspect is; several poems on the themes and circumstances of famed medieval poets; tercets on a painting by American impressionist William Merritt Chase; readings of old photographs; and apt literary and mythological allusions. Not once is a poem stuffy or obscure. Each is graceful and sympathetic, many are profound, all are fit to be appreciated again and again. --Ray Olson

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0807134112
• ISBN 13: 9780807134115
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88