Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems

by Grace Schulman

Overview

Attesting to Grace Schulman's gifts for her craft, Days of Wonder collects verse spanning nearly three decades, including ten new poems and selections from the poet's four previous collections. Schulman's well-crafted lyrics contain equal portions of reverence and lament, praise and joy. Many of her poems communicate a sense of wonder at the beauty of the world, with references to painters and poets and religion. As William Stafford has written, Schulman "renews our faith in ourselves and in the language we use for finding each other."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547561530
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/14/2003
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	250 KB

About the Author

GRACE SCHULMAN is the author many acclaimed books of poetry, including Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. For her poetry she has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the Aiken-Taylor Award, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, New York University’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and three Pushcart prizes. Schulman is a distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. She is a former director of the Poetry Center (1978–1984) and a former poetry editor of The Nation (1971–2006).

Table of Contents

	From Burn Down the Icons (1976)
	The Abbess of Whitby	3
	Whitby Abbey	4
	Written on a Road Map	5
	Names	6
	Horses on the Grass	7
	That Maple	8
	Street Dance in Barcelona	9
	Surely as Certainty Changes	10
	The Other Side of Humankind	11
	Poetry Editor	13
	The Examination: Remembrance of Words Lost	16
	In the Country of Urgency, There Is a Language	20
	Birds on a Blighted Tree	22
	Epithalamion	23
	Spain, 1964	24
	Burial of a Fisherman in Hydra	25
	Recovery	26
	Burn Down the Icons	28
	Moon	30
	Letter to Helen	31
	From Hemispheres (1984)
	Blessed Is the Light	37
	City of Many Names	38
	Let There Be Translators!	40
	Sutton Hoo Ship Burial	41
	Songs of My Fathers	43
	Hemispheres	44
	Easy as Wind	45
	Morning Song	46
	Losses	47
	The Stars and the Moon	48
	The Messenger	49
	The Flight	50
	Images of Gravity	51
	The Marsh	53
	Small Meteor	54
	Instructions for a Journey	55
	From For That Day Only (1994)
	For That Day Only	59
	The Present Perfect	63
	After the Division	66
	Footsteps on Lower Broadway	69
	New Netherland, 1654	73
	The Button Box	76
	Home Movie	78
	Site	79
	Crossing the Square	81
	Notes from Underground: W. H. Auden on the Lexington Avenue IRT	83
	God's Letters	84
	Urban Bestiary	86
	Expulsion	88
	False Move	91
	The Wedding	92
	Julian of Norwich	94
	Rescue in Pescallo	95
	El Greco's Saint James, the Less	103
	Carrion	104
	Two Trees	106
	The Luxembourg Gardens	107
	From The Paintings of Our Lives (2001)
	Prayer	115
	God Speaks	117
	Eve's Unnaming	118
	Chaim Soutine	120
	Poem Ending with a Phrase from the Psalms	122
	Psalm for an Anniversary	123
	Balm in Gilead	125
	No Strings	126
	In the Cafe	127
	Carnegie Hill Birdlore	128
	Blue Dawn	129
	December	130
	American Solitude	131
	Storm Watch	134
	Young Woman Drawing, 1801	135
	Black and White	136
	Margaret Fuller	138
	The Dancers	140
	Brooklyn Bridge	141
	Henry James Revisiting, 1904	144
	The Paintings of Our Lives	146
	Last Requests	148
	One Year Without Mother	150
1	What Can You Believe?	150
2	The Piano	151
3	Things	152
4	Ceremony	153
5	Words in the Dark	154
6	Ring Sale	155
7	Eagle	156
8	The Fall	157
9	Keeper	158
10	A Goldsmith in His Shop	159
11	The Lesson of a Tree	160
12	Lamentation Scene	161
13	Offering	162
14	Credo	163
15	Requiem	164
	New Poems
	Repentance of an Art Critic, 1925	167
	Flags	170
	1932	171
	Jewish Cemetery, Eleventh Street	173
	Job's Question on Nevis	174
	Long Winter Dusk	175
	Grandmother's Sea	176
	Steps	178
	Bitter Spring	180
	An Empty Surfboard on a Quiet Sea	181
	Notes	183

Editorial Reviews

Distinguished professor of English at the City University of New York, poetry editor of the Nation, a former director of New York's famed 92nd Street Y Poetry Center and author of four previous books from 1976's Burning Down the Icons to Paintings of Our Lives, released earlier this year Schulman has been a highly visible advocate for poetry. In a characteristic Schulman poem, large, difficult questions resonate in the small, singular moments of appreciation: a lover's late discovery of apples, "iron fences/ handwrought with lyres, Greek frets, acanthus leaves," or even "the Life Insurance Company's golden/ pyramid that strews gold dust on black hair." There are allusions to canonical painters and canonical poems, and a variety of religious references, which engender equal portions of reverence and lament. Many of the poems' small pleasures are found amid sometimes difficult, sometimes serene backdrops: "Downtown, in my brick aerie, the late sun/ stripes a bare wall saffron, orange, and brown;/ Bach on CDs, my love and I look down/ from small but lustrous rooms, our residence." The appearance of this book so soon after Paintings, which is generously excerpted here (23 poems) and which is set to be reprinted in paperback February 12, is thus puzzling, since this volume, which includes 10 new poems, is certain to quickly supercede it. Yet Schulman's well-crafted lyrics are well-packaged here, and their joyous descriptions and welcoming aspect should please the curious and converted alike. As one new poem puts it, "pitched forward to hear the whirlwind's reply,/ she shook a fist, then opened hands in praise." (Feb. 16) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Schulman keeps busy as poetry editor at the Nation and Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, but she still has time to write poetry clear and calm as a stilled lake yet abundant with joy. The poems collected here span three decades. (LJ 3/1/02) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal