Good Heart: Poems - Softcover

Keenan, Deborah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1571314156 ISBN 13: 9781571314154

Publisher: Milkweed Editions, 2003

Synopsis

Good Heart tells the reader what it means to have a "good heart" with all fantasies left aside. Keenan shows the reality of what a "good heart" must do to survive in the vast landscape of society, friends, and family. Kennan says, "I admit an extraordinary number of human flaws and frailties into the text—-claim the ragged journey that only sometimes leads to wisdom, and too often to harsh judgement, sorrow, losses. Because I am an autobiographical, and lyric, and narrative poet, each of my books carries my personal history, and the strands of cultural and political history forward. The poems in Good Heart were written to honor some endings in my life--the end of two extremely important friendships, the end of my mom’s healthy years, the end of plundering my dad’s tragic choices. I wanted to reflect on, and honor and, sum up, some personal and cultural history."

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Keenan is the author of eight collections of poetry. Her newest, Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems, was published by Milkweed Editions Press in 2007, and received the Minnesota Book Award in 2007. She is coeditor (with Roseann Lloyd) of Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile, which won the American Book Award in 1991. Keenan has received two Bush Foundation Fellowships for her poetry, an NEA Fellowship, The Loft-McKnight Poet of Distinction award, among other grants and awards. She is a professor in the MFA program at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in both 1994 and 2000, was named professor of the year for teaching and service in the MFA/MALS program. She also teaches once a year at The Loft Literary Center, and for Compleat Scholar at the University of Minnesota, and also runs private classes. She's currently at work on two new collections of poems.

Review

"Keenan is generous in word and deed, pulling images from the everyday life around us." -- City Pages, December 31, 2003

Keenan speaks to what's important....love....loss. And in every case she delivers. -- The Corresponder, Fall 2003

Edition details

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1571314156
• ISBN 13: 9781571314154
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 84