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The woman I kept to myself : poems / by Julia Alvarez.

Van Pelt Library PS3551.L845 W66 2004
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LIBRA - Special PS3551.L845 W66 2004
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Alvarez, Julia.
Contributor:
Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Women--Poetry.
Women.
Genre:
Poetry.
Fiction.
Penn Provenance:
Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)
Physical Description:
159 pages ; 21 cm
Edition:
First edition.
Place of Publication:
Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004.
Summary:
The works of award-winning poet and novelist Julia Alvarez are rich with the language and influences of two cultures: the Dominican Republic of her childhood and the America of her youth and adulthood. They have shaped her writing just as they have shaped her life.
Since her first celebrated novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, she has been expressing the passions and opinions of sisters and aunts, mothers and daughters, heroines and martyrs. In The Woman I Kept to Myself, seventy-five poems that weave together the narrative of a woman's inner life, it is Alvarez's own clear voice that sings out in every line. These are not poems of a woman discovering herself -- Alvarez might say that's what her twenties were for -- but of a woman returning to herself. Now, in the middle of her life, she looks back as a way of understanding and celebrating the woman she has become. Her voice becomes all our voices as she speaks of failed loves and marriages, late-in-life love, politics and prejudices that haunt us. The humanity and humor that permeate even her darkest thoughts are offered to the reader in these wise and intimate poems.
Contents:
Seven Trees
Family Tree 3
Saman 5
Weeping Willow 7
Maple, Oak, or Elm? 9
Arborvitae 11
Locust 13
Last Trees 15
The Woman I Kept to Myself
Intimations of Mortality from a Recollection in Early Childhood 19
Anger & Art 21
El fotografo 23
The Red Pickup 25
Spic 27
All-American Girl 29
Bellevue 31
Abbot Academy 33
By Accident 35
Vain Doubts 37
First Muse 39
Lunch Hour, 1971 41
Heartland 43
Bad-Weather Friends 45
Sisterhoods 47
Reunion 49
My Bottom Line 51
Love Portions 53
Fights 55
Tone 57
Hairbands 59
Manholes 61
Canons 63
My Kind of Woman 65
Musco del Hombre 67
Ars Politica 69
Naming the Animals 71
The Animals Review Pictures of a Vanished Race 73
Why Don't We Ever See Jesus Laughing? 75
Addison's Vision 77
Winter Storm 79
The Therapist 81
Disappearing 83
Gaining My Self Back 85
That moment 87
Signs 89
Deathdays 91
All's Clear 93
Now, When I Look at Women 95
At the GYN 97
Grand Baby 99
Life Lines 101
Spring, at Last! 103
Regreso 105
In Spanish 107
You 109
Leaving English 111
Meditation 113
Aficionados 115
Touching Bottom 117
Cleaning Ladies 119
Tom 121
I Dream of Allen Ginsberg 123
Famous Poet, Years Afterward 125
Why I Teach 127
Undercover Poet 129
Small Portions 131
"Poetry makes nothing happen"? 133
Reading for Pleasure 135
Direct Address 137
Passing On 139
Keeping Watch
El sereno 143
Looking Up 145
What We Ask For 147
What Was It That I Wanted? 149
Keeping Watch 151
Why I Write 153
Did I Redeem Myself? 155.
Local Notes:
Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.
ISBN:
1565124065
OCLC:
53967117

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