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Collected poems / Don Gordon ; edited and with an essay by Fred Whitehead.

PS3513.O5775 A17 2004

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Format:: Book
Author/Creator:: Gordon, Don, 1902-1989.
Contributor:: Whitehead, Fred.
Series:: American poetry recovery series; The American poetry recovery series
Standardized Title:: Poems
Language:: English
Physical Description:: xii, 277 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Place of Publication:: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2004]
Summary:: This long-overdue collection, which gathers together more than two hundred poems written over a span of six decades, along with an extended biographical analysis by Fred Whitehead, permits a comprehensive assessment of the work of a man Thomas McGrath described as "one of the very best of the revolutionary poets." Don Gordon made his name in the 1930s as a passionate and outspoken political poet, his work being published in the most prestigious American journals. In spite of his growing literary reputation he was called before the Un-American Activities Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in September 1951. Due to his openly communist views and his reluctance to give the committee names of fellow radical writers, Gordon was blacklisted from employment in the film industry. He devoted his time to writing poems, despite the difficulty of finding a wide audience for them. Many of Gordon's poems are suffused with themes of revolution and political activism, but this collection showcases the breadth of the subjects he addressed in his sixty years of writing, expressed with a rigorous aesthetic sensibility in a style that incorporates diverse influences, including modernism and surrealism. "Don Gordon is great," Meridel LeSueur wrote, "because he shows the vigorous and wondrous strength of the people." With this complete collection of his poems, readers can at last experience the full range of this vigorous and challenging writer.
Contents:: Statement (1943); Sea 3; The Wailing Wall 3; Nocturne 4; The Gardens of the Sea 4; Legend of Amber 5; Image of Gold 5; Nor Any Word Is Said 6; Atomic Theory 6; Skyward the Mote 7; Kronos 8; Content of the Wind 8; Year of Grace 9; Statement 9; Glacier 10; The Village 11; Pecs 12; Unemployed 13; Hunger March 14; They Have Come for Their Answers 15; Instant of Light 16; Sargasso 16; Underground, 1935 17; Example of the Sun 18; Testament 19; Law of Flight 20; We Speak of Action 21; The Transient 21; To the Pickets 22; The Strike-Breaker 23; The Zones 23; Love Song, 1938 24; We Will Be Martial 24; The Departure 27; Dialectic 27; It Begins in the Man 28; Exchange of Heroes 28; Death Masks; In the Hall of State 30; Marx 31; Lenin 32; Hitler 33; Mussolini 34; Hirohito 35; The Diplomat 37; The Headsman in Evening Clothes 38; The Informer 39; The Poet in the Stone House 40; The Unknown Worker 41; The Exile 42; Decade 5; Spain 43; The Enemy 43; Civilian Poems (1946); The Sealed Train 47; Communique 47; Bomber's Moon 48; The Islands 49; The Black Pilot 50; Desert Camp 50; Love Song 51; Laocoon 51; The Conqueror 52; The Guerrilla 53; The Cities 53; Death of the Dictator 54; Hospital Room 54; The Civilian 55; The Second Battle of Warsaw 56; The Undefended 57; The House 57; The Beachhead 58; The German 59; Biography 60; The Casualties 62; The Beads 62; Occupied Country 63; The Antennae 64; The Romantic 65; The Warhead 66; The Prisoners 67; The Threshold 67; Displaced Persons (1958); Displaced Persons 71; UXB 71; The Kimono 72; The Lady on the Chartreuse Couch 73; Nobody Hears You 73; Sunday Afternoon 74; Crystallization 75; The Investigation 76; The Silent 77; The Dissenter 78; The Deportee 79; The Hunted 79; In the Gaunt Hour 80; On the Border 81; Decade 6 81; The Silent Generation 82; The Neurotics 83; The Lizard 84; The Pensioner 84; Guadalajara 84; El Toro 85; Death of the Architect 86; The Destroyers 86; The Blow Lands 87; Legend 88; Someone Always Says 88; The Middle Passage 89; The Exiles 90; The Children 91; In the Forest 92; When the Time Comes 93; The State 94; Sometime in a Park 95; At the Station 95; On the Ward (1977); On the Ward, One 99; On the Ward, Two 99; The Child 100; The Man on the Ledge 101; Dead on Arrival 102; 12:01 A.M. 103; After the Gothic 104; The Freeway 105; Defoliation 106; The General 106; Killing 107; History 108; Migrations 109; Blowing Away 110; Flower Child at 30 111; Kamikaze 111; We Are Living 112; The Reichstag Fires 113; The Temporary Man 114; Nonperson 115; Tableau Vivant 116; Samizdat 117; Refugees 118; Extradition 119; The Underground Railroad 119; Memorial Day 120; We Are Not Ready 121; They Could Not Lift Their Heads 122; What Shall I Do? 123; The Family 124; Obits 125; The Nature of the City 125; The House 126; Plants 127; The Neighbor 128; The First Law 128; The Message 129; Passing Away 130; The Contract 131; Neolithic 131; Nights 132; In Memoriam 133; Exiles 134; 70 134; Snakes 135; You Are Born Again 136; A Talk with Death 137; Wilderness 138; Time Is Going Somewhere 138; The Last Poem 139; Excavations (1979); Excavations 143; The Archaeologist 144; The Cave 144; 4 A.M. 145; Autobiography 146; Dynamics 147; Mortal 148; Voyages 148; In the Continents of the Dark 149; Listen, Children 150; Ancestors 151; Birds 151; Transit 152; Flight 153; The Ox 154; Statues 155; Of Excellence 155; Something Flies Out of the Cells 156; The Fair Country 157; Plateaus 158; Missing Person 159; Bicentennial 159; The Fourth World 160; Gulls 161; 12:00 Noon 162; The Assassin 162; The Music 163; The Holiday 164; The Hull 165; The Shtetl 166; The Seventh Sense 167; An Old Radical 168; Survival 168; In the Real World 169; In the Hospital 170; Days 171; Childhood 172; Graffiti 172; Return of the Exile 173; The Mugging 174; Kristallnacht 175; 2000 175; Deadfalls 176; Rootless 177; Gardens 178; The Midden 178; The Refuge 179; Free Fall 180; The Visitor 181; Ruins 181; The Artifact 182; The Sea of Tranquility (1989); Lions 187; Citizen Band 187; The Scientist 188; Light 188; No One 189; In the Cell 190; The City 190; Minnows 191; In the Vanguard 192; Words and Music 192; To the Survivors 193; The Mole 193; Someone Has Heard 194; Waiting 195; On the Border 195; The Missiles 196; Communique 197; The Distance to the Planets 197; On the Mesa 198; Childhood 198; 80 199; Black Hole 200; There Were No People 200; Neighborhood Watch 201; Worlds 201; The Theory 202; Los Desaparecidos 203; The Tears 203; Chosen People 204; The Widows 204; The Sea of Tranquility 205.
Notes:: Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-274) and index.
ISBN:: 0252028597
OCLC:: 51544021

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Collected poems / Don Gordon ; edited and with an essay by Fred Whitehead.

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