Midwinter Day - Softcover

Mayer, Bernadette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811214060 ISBN 13: 9780811214063

Publisher: New Directions, 1999

Synopsis

Perhaps Bernadette Mayer's greatest work, Midwinter Day was written on December 22, 1978, at 100 Main Street, Lenox, Massachusetts.

"Midwinter Day," as Alice Notley noted, "is an epic poem about a daily routine." A poem in six parts, Midwinter Day takes us from awakening and emerging from dreams through the whole day-morning, afternoon, evening, night-to dreams again: ". . . a plain introduction to modes of love and reason/Then to end I guess with love, a method to this winter season/Now I've said this love it's all I can remember/Of Midwinter Day the twenty-second of December//Welcome sun, at last with thy softer light/That takes the bite from winter weather/And weaves the random cloth of life together/And drives away the long black night!"

About this title

About the Author:

Called “a consummate poet” by Robert Creeley, Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1945. A most prolific poet, her first book was published at the age of twenty-three. Many texts later she continues to write progressive poetry from her home in East Nassau, New York. For many years Mayer lived and worked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where she was the Director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project from 1980-1984. Bernadette Mayer has received grants and awards from PEN American Center, The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art, the NEA, The Academy of American Poets, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

From Publishers Weekly:

First published in 1982 by Turtle Island, this book-length poem makes an excellent introduction to Mayers work, and its re-release signals a growing recognition of her achievement. Written about one day in her life, the book uses both long, elegant lines (occasionally and humorously rhyming) and prose poetry (reminiscent of her works from the 70s like Studying Hunger and Memory) to prove that the day like the dream has everything in it. Cataloging this everything, as it comes out ofand vanishes back intothe quotidian routine of buying food, going to the library, cooking for children, visiting friends and writing, becomes an occasion for Mayers characteristic enthusiasm, inventiveness and brilliance. With conscious nods to UlyssesStately you came to town in my opening dream, Mayer divides the day into six (rather than 18) sections, reversing Joyce by beginning with dreams. Events in the poems presentMarie says she wants to read a book before I fix the rest of dinnerfold into the writers own past (car accidents, early relationships, family history), the pasts of writers like Margaret Fuller and Hawthorne, and into encyclopedic speculations about art making, scientific discoveries and travel to the North Pole. It is Mayers unexpected and various ways of linking personal experience and public historySo when I write of love I write of/ Binding referendums, bankruptcy intent,/ Industrials, utilities and sales/ The petitions of a citizens groupthat make the book such an important example of her own influential experimentation, and such a thorough pleasure.
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About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0811214060
• ISBN 13: 9780811214063
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120