Life watch : poems / by Willis Barnstone.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barnstone, Willis, 1927-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

American poets continuum series ; v. 77.

American poets continuum series ; no. 77

Language:

English

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

143 pages ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Rochester, NY : Boa Editions, 2003.

Summary:

"Life Watch: A Circle of Ninety-One Nights "is an ambitious sequence of -poems that begins in childhood, moves through Barnstone's adult years, and returns to youth. The poems engage and reflect on the civil wars that the author found himself in the midst of, Mexican orphanages, the cafes and arts salons in Paris, and walking with Borges. As the circles of these poems widen, they gather many perspectives on a life watched.

Willis Barnstone has taught at universities in Greece and Argentina and authored more than 40 books -- poetry collections, poetry translations, philosophical and religious texts. "The New Covenant, his literary translation of the New Testament," was published in 2001 (Riverhead Books).

Contents:

Train to Paris

Train to Paris 13

Gas lamp, 1893 14

In our life watch 15

Room of the orphans 17

Fixing the life watch 19

Again at the Denver airport, recalling Federico and my folks in 1929 in New York 20

Back in 1901 23

Father 25

A child's Christmas in Manhattan 27

Our New York skyline in the 1930s, now on fire in September 28

Dashing north 29

Mother 30

Brother 32

Sister 33

With Zo in the botanical wood 34

The lost son (Luke 15.11-32) 35

Gold watch s36

Morning

Ikon 41

The postman in love 42

Companions of light 43

Zo near a Sifnos monastery 44

Vagrant 45

Drifting 46

Cloudy Sunday 48

Wartime cafe 49

With the blindman 50

On The First Day

In the beginning 53

Adam the surveyor 54

Aeneas 56

After the crucifixions of 4 BCE 57

Virgil 58

Seder in one of the odd rooms 59

Yeshua ben Yosef at the stake 60

Ophelia sings out 61

Spinoza in the Dutch Ghetto 62

Baudelaire suffering winter 63

Machado at his window 64

Daybreak with Jean-Louis Kerouac 65

Leopold and his lepers 67

Of Julio who almost kills me 68

Twilight

When I die bury me with raw onions 71

Lapland 72

Ocean speech 73

Castillo negro 74

Black castle 76

Blue Tibet is very high 78

Waiting for the barbarians 79

Hanging from spikes, dropping to earth 81

If God had an apartment 82

The eleven commandments 83

Dancing with electrons 85

Secrets of the lonely 86

Talking to an orange 88

Russian and Spanish jail friends 89

Feeling his midnight arm 90

Past Midnight

Evenings in Buenos Aires 93

Snow in the Dakotas 94

Her hands 95

Full moon over a two-note man 96

Night of an exquisite morning 97

A Czech wakes as a cockroach 98

Open the window and let the night come in with its perfect memory of streets 99

Beautiful movements 100

Rooftop 101

My family in brightness 102

Coffins of black 103

Thou among the wastes 104

First word 105

Dawn Cafe

Night watch 109

On the Silk Road 110

Cafe de l'aube 112

Dawn cafe 113

Vincent on the toilet wall 114

In the broom closet 115

Memory house on Plato Street 116

The shtetl ghost 117

Blind date 119

When I die bury me with light ticking 120

Train to Paris

Giving a watch life 123

A fool of sighs 124

Loneliness 125

PS I love you 126

Secret face of love 127

Wings of the morning 128

Feeling young 129

Sailor of the stars 131

At my funeral 133

When I die bury me in fire or earth 134

Memory is my ship 135

Train to Paris 136.

ISBN:

1929918364

OCLC:

51818545