The Contracted World
New & More Selected Poems
Published on 29. January 2006
129 pages
978-0-8229-9123-6 (ISBN)
Description
The Contracted World includes representative poems from four of Peter Meinke's previous collections. In poems that show us what it is like to grow up in America, love, nature, cities, sports, war, and peace are filtered through the imagination and verbal skills of one of our brightest poets.The new poems experiment with form, and address a life that is shrinking in specific ways: the poet is aging, the world is getting smaller, our post-9/11 freedoms are eroding, and our choices seem fewer and less attractive. Despite feelings of anger and loneliness, the narrator speaks to us in a personal, accessible, and often humorous voice.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2006
University of Pittsburgh Press
€25.00
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
Peter Meinke holds the Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. He has been a professor of literature and creative writing at Eckerd College and has served as writer-in-residence at numerous colleges, including University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of Hawaii. Meinke has published seven prior books of poetry, including Scars, Zinc Fingers, and Liquid Paper. He is also the author of six poetry chapbooks and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Olivet Prize, the Paumanok Award, three Poetry Society of America Awards, the Flannery O'Connor Award, and two NEA Fellowships.
Content
- Intro
- Contents
- Fish Tale
- I. Left-Winged Sonnets
- Brief Meditations on a Woodcut by Leonard Baskin
- The Graybeards
- Marine Forecast
- The Purity of Absolute Perfection
- The Death of Friends
- Turkish Coffee
- Elderly, She Paints Another Nude
- The Director
- 91st Birthday
- Mystery
- Caterpillar Plague, 2000
- The Skiers
- Treasure Island
- Maples and Orange Trees, 2003
- Rocking Horse Winner
- Butterfly Cage
- The Triumph of Desert Storm
- II. The Chemical Chain
- The Contracted World
- P-town, '04
- What Wild-Eyed Murderer
- The Deserted Village, 2002
- Inheritance
- The True UFO Story
- The Spindled World
- The Simplest Animals
- The Chemical Chain
- The Little Factory, 1863
- M. Hoffstetler's Last Class
- American Youth
- Blackberry Jam
- Lilacs
- On Teaching Our Son to Tell Time
- The Wedding: February 26, 2000
- The Timaya Tree
- Epithalamion for Two Scientists
- The Bookshelf
- Song from the Wrong Bay
- lll. from The Night Train & the Golden Bird
- The Night Train
- The Patient
- Morocco
- The Great Wall
- Gramma
- Bones in an African Cave
- Neuchâtel Swans
- Cheerios
- Vegetables
- Poem to Old Friends Who Have Never Met
- Sunday at the Apple Market
- The Anchor
- Angels Drink
- J Randall Randle
- The Golden Bird
- IV. from The Rat Poems
- V. from Trying to Surprise God
- Trout
- Happy Hour
- Letter from Warsaw, 1979
- A Necessary Bucket
- Preacher, Said the General
- The Hunters: Southeast Africa
- Greta Garbo Poem #41
- To an Athlete Turned Poet
- Threnody
- Miss Arbuckle
- Recipe
- The Artist
- VIfrom Night Watchon the Chesapeake
- On the Bus in D.C., 1980
- The Pin
- Lordship Lane Station
- Weeds
- The Sheep
- A Dream of Third Base
- Sonnets for a Diabetic
- Fraxinus Nigra
- The Last Mountain Lion on Maple Crest Mountain
- Birchbark
- Lines for the Reviewer
- Caitlin Rampant on a Field in Tuscany
- One Hundred Robins
- The Shells of Bermuda
- Acknowledgments
