Stranger by night : poems / Edward Hirsch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hirsch, Edward, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poetry.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

62 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.

Summary:

"In his 70th birthday year, the award-winning poet looks back on what was and accepts what is, in a beautiful sequence about what sustains him. Beginning with "My Friends Don't Get Buried," the lament of a delinquent mourner as his friends have begun to die, and ending with the plaintive note to self "don't write elegies/anymore," Hirsch takes us backward through the decades in these memory poems of startling immediacy. He recalls the black dress a lover wore when he couldn't yet know the tragedy of her burning spirit; the radiance of an autumn day in Detroit when his students smoked outside, passionately discussing Shelley; the day he got off late from a railyard shift and missed an anti-war demonstration. There are direct and indirect elegies to lost contemporaries like Mark Strand, William Meredith, and, most especially, his longtime compatriot Philip Levine, whom he honors in several poems about daily work in the late midcentury Midwest. As the poet ages and begins to lose his peripheral vision, the world is "stranger by night," but these elegant, heart-stirring poems shed light on a lifetime that inevitably contains both sorrow and its opposite"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

My Friends Don't Get Buried p. 3

The Black Dress p. 4

The Unveiling p. 5

The Keening p. 6

After the Stroke p. 7

The Secret p. 8

In Memory of Mark Strand p. 9

Let's Go Down to the Bayou p. 10

When You Write the Story p. 11

The Radiance p. 12

Riding Nowhere p. 13

Let's Get Off the Bus p. 14

In the Valley p. 15

What Is Happiness? p. 17

Windber Field p. 18

Night Class in Daisytown p. 19

The Stony Creek p. 20

In the Endless Mountains p. 21

Days of 1975 p. 22

Are You a Narc? p. 23

The Iron Gate p. 24

The Fencer p. 25

An Unexpected Mirror p. 26

Don't Hitchhike p. 28

Waste Management p. 30

On the Engine p. 32

The Brakeman p. 33

That's the Job p. 34

I Rang the Bell p. 35

I Missed the Demonstration p. 36

In the Freezer p. 38

To My Seventeen-Year-Old Self p. 39

Chemistry Lesson p. 41

Someone Is Always Shouting p. 42

Snapshot of My Natural Father p. 43

The Elevated Train p. 44

A Small Tribe p. 45

The Guild p. 47

The Task p. 49

A House of Good Stone p. 50

Every Poem Was a Secret p. 52

I Was an Illiterate Herdsman p. 53

The Window Washer p. 54

Stranger by Night p. 55

Sometimes I Stumble p. 56

A Baker Swept By p. 57

I Walked Out of the Cemetery p. 58

Don't Write Elegies p. 59.

Notes:

"This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf"

Other Format:

Online version: Hirsch, Edward, 1950- Stranger by night

ISBN:

9780525657781

0525657789

OCLC:

1101574711

Publisher Number:

99983781151