Ursula K. Le Guin: Collected Poems (LOA #368) (Library of America, 368) - Hardcover

Le Guin, Ursula K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1598537369 ISBN 13: 9781598537369

Publisher: Library of America, 2023

Synopsis

At last, a major American poet collected for the first time in the sixth volume of the definitive Library of Edition of her works

STARRED REVIEW IN PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Ursula K. Le Guin’s career began and ended with poetry. This sixth volume in the definitive Library of America edition of her works gathers, for the first time, her collected poems—from her earliest collection Wild Angels (1974) through her final publication, the collection So Far So Good, which she delivered to her editor just a week before her death in 2018.

The themes explored in the poems gathered here resonate through all Le Guin’s oeuvre, but find their strongest voice in her poetry: exploration as a metaphor for both human bravery and creativity, the mystery and fragility of nature and the impact of humankind on their environment, the Tao Te Ching, marriage, womanhood, and even cats. Le Guin’s poetry is often traditional in form but never in style: her verse is earthy, surprising, and lyrical. 

Including some 40 poems never before collected, this volume restores to print much of Le Guin's remarkable verse. It features a new introduction  by editor Harold Bloom, written before his death in 2019, in which he reflects on the power of Le Guin’s poems, which he calls “American originals.” It also features helpful explanatory notes and a chronology of Le Guin’s life.

About this title

About the Author

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was one of most acclaimed writers of the last half century, the author of numerous novels and stories across multiple genres as well as a dozen books of poetry. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.  
  
Harold Bloom (1930–2019) was the leading literary critic of his generation, the author of more than forty books including The Anxiety of Influence, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, The Western Canon, and The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emerson to Pynchon. 
 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Read at the Award Dinner, May 1996

Beware when you honor an artist.
You are praising danger.
You are holding out your hand
to the dead and the unborn.
You are counting on what cannot be counted.


The poet’s measures serve anarchic joy.
The story-teller tells one story: freedom.


Above all beware of honoring women artists.
For the housewife will fill the house with lions
and in with the grandmother
come bears, wild horses, great horned owls, coyotes.



(The Award dinner was when Le Guin was presented with a Retrospective James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award for The Left Hand of Darkness.)


Anonyma
When the great lordly singers hush,
my casual and selfless voice
that takes no profit, makes no choice,
pipes up, indifferent as a thrush.


When brazen monuments corrode
and praise is dust in dust with blame
and dateless night hides every name,
I still go lilting down the road.


It’s sad that hopes and poets die,
but my dear task and fondest care
is to bear softly what’s to bear
and ever to sing the lullabye.

Edition details

• Publisher: Library of America
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1598537369
• ISBN 13: 9781598537369
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 850
• Editor: Bloom Harold