Galaxy Love

by Gerald Stern

Overview

“Pure movement of mind, passion, knowledge.” —Juan Felipe Herrera

Galaxy Love spans countries and centuries, reflecting on memory, aging, history, and mortality. In wistful, generous, and lively love poems and elegies, National Book Award winner Gerald Stern captures the passage of time, the joys of a sensual life, and remembrances of the past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357516
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/29/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Gerald Stern (1925—2022), the author of nineteen volumes of poetry, was awarded the National Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Wallace Stevens Award, among many other honors.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 13

The Truth 17

Galaxy Love 18

Bio VII 19

Bastards 21

Grandfathers 22

Bio VIII 23

Hiphole 24

Song of Deborah 26

Canticle 27

Miami 28

Blue Jay 29

Blue Particles 30

Ghost 31

Ich Bin Jude 32

Today It's Easter 33

The Hill 34

Dead Lamb 35

Space and Time 37

Azaleas 38

Cup Cake Store 39

Perish the Day 40

Poverty 41

Bess, Zickel, Warhol, Arendt 43

Bollingen Ezra Pound, 1949 45

Merwin 46

No One 47

Route 29 48

Midrash 50

Two Boats 51

Ravenous 53

Silence 55

Dark Blue Geese 57

Ruby Red 58

A Walk Back from the Restaurant 59

Lips 60

Main Bridge 61

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 1939 62

Ritsos 63

Boheme 64

Decades 65

Those Who Loved Budapest 66

Gold 67

The One in Paris 68

Ecstasy 70

Book of the Dead 71

The Year of Everything 72

Billionaires 74

Two Things 76

Larry 79

Les Fleurs 81

Never Again 83

Croissant Moon 84

Hope Mountain 85

To Comfort You 86

Thieves and Murderers 88

Talking Angels 90

Mad Ireland Drove Him into Poetry 91

Prince of the Second Heaven 92

Dirty Music 94

Sunset 95

Coal Barons 96

Orson 98

Visit from Mars 100

Gelato 102

Ancient Chinese Egg 104

Loneliness 106

Hamlet Naked 107

Believe It 109

KGB, The Reading 111

Goldfinches 113

Marriage Song 114

West Virginia 115

Fall 1960 117

Mulberries 118

Philadelphia, North of Huntingdon 119

My Grave 121

Skylark 122

The Other 123

One War 124

Editorial Reviews

"Stern is… absolutely necessary to living."

Erie Reader - John Repp

"Poetry-talk is [Stern’s] gift; with the spirit and intent of the poetry gods."

Washington Independent Review of Books - Grace Cavalieri

"What a voice, what a bardic roll. [Gerald Stern’s] poetry is a lifelong act of love."

Philadelphia Inquirer - John Timpane

"[Stern] has settled into a serenity reminiscent of his old master Whitman.… [But] the old appetite is still on duty.… In every overcaffeinated and rumbustious line, Gerald Stern has been telling us that the best way to live is not so much for poetry but through poetry, and he underlines that idea here again in Galaxy Love."

David Kirby

"[Gerald] Stern is nearly 92 and still producing poetry that exudes a keen awareness of the strangeness of age."

Forward - Tayla Zax

"In Galaxy Love, [Stern] is nostalgic, expansive, intellectual, silly, serious, homespun, highfalutin—sometimes all at once.… His perspective, and his way of accessing religious, political, and literary history, have earned him a place among great American poets."

Lucy Biederman

"There has never been a poet like Gerald Stern, who likes to shake things and empty them out, and then share what’s found with the entire congregation. Sorrow and exultation get their equal turn, but it’s the human imagination and all its jubilant fecundity that’s paid special attention. Whether it’s a fistfight between Stevens and Hemingway (‘Who punched whom’) or Tolstoy dying unsweetened, what’s offered is nothing less than an excursion into the soul, where, as we all know, one finds love for the galaxy, at least one goat sucker, and a wild canary. I didn’t know until the last page how famished I was, how in need of a feast."

Philip Schultz

…a Stern poem…is less a matter of catharsis and more one of shoving life's component parts around until a new structure emerges…It's safe to say that, no matter how his poems have changed over time, appetite for the world and all its riches is the driving force of Stern's career, from his earliest books through this one…For decades, and in every overcaffeinated and rumbustious line, Gerald Stern has been telling us that the best way to live is not so much for poetry but through poetry, and he underlines that idea here again in Galaxy Love. I believe him.

The New York Times Book Review - David Kirby

"Gerald Stern, little by little, in these masterful poems, tasks the torque of knowledge and enlightenment in things möbius, people and places, Paris, Long Island, Harlem, the cuisine in between, who notices the stain of Nazi-fingers on the lips of Arendt, who bows down to the little animals once again and laughs out loud, it seems, because he still stuffs a twenty inside his shoe heel as in the early days—who charts a life of many loves and turns—and that indescribable and churning thing called—our lives. Pure movement of mind, passion, knowledge—a letter of sorts—to the universe."

Juan Felipe Herrera

02/15/2017
Prolific poet Stern, winner of such accolades as the National Book Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, and the Robert Frost Medal, among others, sticks to form in this latest. Stern's speakers—mostly his celebratory, verbose, digressive self, in the Whitmanian tradition—look backward, as the eponymous poem clearly articulates in its opening lines: "There's too little time left to measure/ the space between us for that was/ long ago." The framing devices remain mostly in the past tense, as in "Dead Lamb" ("For some reason there was no more sea") and "Silence" ("I once planned a room for pure silence"). VERDICT Although this book quickly follows In Beauty Bright, which might leave readers wondering how fresh these poems feel, these ultimately thoughtful narrative recollections from and about the poet himself should do well in most general poetry collections. [See Prepub Alert, 10/24/16.]—Stephen Morrow, Hilliard, OH

Library Journal