Poems 4 A.M.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Minot, Susan

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--20th century.

American poetry.

Women poets, American.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Summary:

In these poems, we come to know a different side of the acclaimed novelist Susan Minot. We find her awake in the middle of the night, contemplating love and heartbreak in all their exhilarating and anguished specifics. With astonishing openness, in language both passionate and enchanting, she offers us an intimate map of a troubled and far-flung heart: "Can you believe I thought that?" she asks, "That we would always go/roaming brave and dangerous/on wild unlit roads?" At once witty and tender, with Dorothy Parker-like turns of the knife and memorable partings from lovers in New York, London, Rome and beyond, these poems capture a restless movement through loves and locales, and charm us at every turn with their forthrightness.

Contents:

Boston ancestors

Bulbs

Family dog

New England rock

The cliff crawlers

There's a man I've thought of many hours

Returning Monday morning from a weekend on the North Fork

The man in the green box

Interloper

Incantamento

Sonnet on being touched

Defending despair while balancing on cobblestones

Mezzo epiphany

The pale blue shutters

Locked out

After watching a pretty bad movie

Letting the horses out of the pen

Talking of the dead. The toast

Reception on the St. Regis roof

Upper west side blizzard

The jar

Waking 4 a.m

No conception

Tea at Essex House

Universe

Tent

Pulled off a garden wall

Director

Rabbit

The affair

St. Sebastian in your kitchen

Collaboration

Ducking the paparazzi

Gratitude

Picturing what I can picture

Say you'll always be

In flooded atlas, Illinois

The whisper

On the road to Morogoro

Editorial lunch on the Ile de la Cité

The narrow corridor

On an airplane leaving Africa

Through the broken window I could see purple jacaranda blossoms

Breathing on the dice

From the window of the shack at shipyard point

After Labor Day

On Hog Island

Dawn in a Chilmark barn.

Notes:

Preliminaries omitted.