One Way To Reconstruct the Scene.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, William Virgil

Series:

Yale series of younger poets ; volume 75.

Yale series of younger poets ; volume 75

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--20th century.

American poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, 1980.

Summary:

Richard Hugo has selected William Virgil Davis's One Way to Reconstruct the Scene as the 1979 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. In his foreword to the volume Hugo says: "William Virgil Davis is a poet who, when he writes, contends with a loving self who wants to render the world as found. His battle is the classic one, the memory versus the imagination. . . . 'Memory is the first property of loss, ' Davis tells us, and that may be true. At least it is worth considering. Certainly a scene, no matter how initially unattractive, reconstructed lovingly in active language posing as passive recall is a true property of gain. Davis believes in and works to create a world we can humanely attend the second time around, and his poems often provide that second chance.".

Contents:

Another night with snow

After the funeral

Triptych for my father

View from the backyard

My son in snow

Overcast day in late Autumn

Winter light

Driving alone in Winter

Sleep of the insomniac

Oxygen tent

Property of loss

Cat in the snow - Late elegy for John Berryman

January

Spider

Ring tree

Bucket of water

Mexico, my friend

Come home

One way to reconstruct the scene

Weight lifter

Leaving

Odor of chrysanthemums

Following the bones

Meeting the bones

They gather together

After three days

In the pit

Promise

Bones in search of a bed

Renting my bed to the bones

Some things the bones never know

Not many years

Oil

And if shriven at last we rise

Bones at rest

In a room

That house, this room

Room without windows

Short history of misunderstanding

Cultivation of pain

Snow

Time of year, the hour

Short treatise on the hand

Place of lost breath

Breakfast as a last resort.

Notes:

Preliminaries omitted.