How to do things with tears / by Allen Grossman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grossman, Allen R., 1932-2014.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copies 1 & 2)

Physical Description:

xii, 98 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New Directions, 2001.

Summary:

How to Do Things with Tears is a book brought forth by the Sighted Singer, the poet who holds the central position in Allen Grossman's newest work. "This is a HOW-TO book," Grossman explains. "The heroic singer of tradition is blind. A NEW singer in this present must be sighted. In this book the poet intends to say something, insofar as a poet can, about the common sadness of living and dying in the world." Like the blind bard of old, Grossman's Sighted Singer conjures visions both high and low, in mythopoeic resonances that excite the sorrows and the laughter of the gods and men.

How to Do Things with Tears in Allen Grossman's first collection since The Philosopher's Window (1995) and his ninth book of poetry. Among his many honors and awards are the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry, MacArthur, Guggenheim, and NEA fellowships, the PEN-Sheaffer/New England Award for Literary Distinction, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University.

Contents:

What these poems undertake to do xii

Part 1 How to do Things with Tears 1

How to do things with tears 3

Enough rain for Agnes Walquist 5

Elsie Young, aged pensioner, on Purgatory Mountain 10

Truluv the sailor 12

Brighter than glass 25

Epistola 26

Part 2 White Sails 27

White sails: Notes toward the autobiography of an American poet 28

Dedicated to Irene on the threshold of the world 29

1. Hello! 31

2. Luth. Sch. 32

3. The Chinese pot 34

4. White sales 35

5. The kiss-stone of the Fate 37

6. Winter road to the Cities 38

7. John the leaping deer 40

8. Cure 41

9. Marriage 43

10. Wallace Stevens entertains a sex worker 45

11. In the incomprehensible house 47

12. Stain 49

13. Her torn afghan 50

14. A woman and a girl feed pigs at sundown 53

15. A great jolt to start 55

16. Think again 56

Not all wanderers are lost 57

Part 3 Do Not be Content with an Imaginary God 63

Weird River 65

Flora's ABC: 6 Perseid sonnets, meteors of late August 66

Shazam! 69

Reason for eating pig 78

Latch: bespoke coffin-maker in purgatory 79

A Grand Caprice 81

Thunderstruck 84

X-rated 86

Your laughing lover 87

Crow 89

Star Asper 90

Part 4 Three Notes on Common Concerns under Star Asper 91

Note 1. Stanzas on pots 93

Note 2. Stanzas on poetic realism 94

Note 3. Ilona's letter 98.

Notes:

"A New Directions paperbook original, NPD912"--P. [4] of cover.

Poems.

ISBN:

0811214648

OCLC:

45172305