For a Limited Time Only
Published on 10. August 2008
104 pages
978-0-8229-9096-3 (ISBN)
Description
Ronald Wallace's eighth collection of poems, is perhaps his darkest and most meditative to date, focusing his experiences with illness, old age, and mortality; his father-in-law's death after a long bout with Alzheimer's; his step-father's death after a painful struggle with esophageal cancer, his own bout with prostate cancer. These personal experiences form the core of the first three sections of the book, but are mediated by theological and philosophical speculations that find further voice in the character of a "Mr. Grim," whose angry, self-pitying, gruff, comic, self-depreciating, nostalgic, defeated, and hopeful riffs on the human condition provide a bridge to the affirmative, often comic, close. In the final two sections, in poems in praise of his dentist, his barber, his wife, his grandparents, the morpheme, Mr. Malaprop, Pluto, tattoos, hamburger heaven, sex talk, and poetry itself, Wallace once again proves the resilience of hope and humor in what is, for him, finally a world of wonders.
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Ronald Wallace
For a Limited Time Only
Book
08/2008
University of Pittsburgh Press
€19.00
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Person
Ronald Wallace is the author of seven previous books of poetry, including: Long for This World: New and Selected Poems; The Uses of Adversity; Time's Fancy; People and Dog in the Sun; and The Makings of Happiness. His works of literary criticism include: God Be with the Clown: Humor in American Poetry; The Last Laugh: Form and Affirmation in the Contemporary American Comic Novel; and Henry James and the Comic Form. Wallace is Halls-Bascom Professor of English, Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry, and codirector of the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Content
- Intro
- CONTENTS
- LIMITED TIME OFFER
- Trouble
- In Praise of My Dentist
- In the Sweet B&B
- In Van Diemen's Land
- Ditched
- In Slow Motion
- Inner City
- Out Walking
- As It Turns Out
- Itinerant Guest
- Then
- Gone
- Professor of Plums
- The Hand of God
- Limited Time Over
- NOW YOU SEE IT
- Jilted
- Off with Her Head!
- Obituary
- The Planning Session
- Abracadabra
- Pascal's Wager
- What It's Like
- On Your Own Terms
- Professor Penis
- Cured
- THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. GRIM
- Mr. Grim's Fairy Tales
- Mr. Grim's Gavotte
- Mr. Grim Thinks What's in a Name
- Mr. Grim Getting Lucky
- Mr. Grim and Grymalkin
- Mr. Grim in Praise of Late Nights & Inclement Weather
- Mr. Grim and God
- The Autobiography of Mr. Grim
- Mr. Grim in Heaven
- Mr. Grim's Lease on Life
- IN THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY
- In the Realm of Possibility
- Hamburger Heaven
- Pluto
- Pasta
- Home Improvement
- Home Maintenance
- All Hands on Deck
- The Origin of the Ear
- This Is Not a Step
- Mr. Malaprop
- In Praise of the Morpheme
- In Praise of My Barber
- Tattooed
- ALL MANNER OF WONDERS
- Career Day
- The Workshop Poem
- No Pegasus
- The Submission
- Sex Talk
- On Television
- Caution
- Sustenance
- For Ruby, Age 2
- The Old Mower
- Little Quack Cuaquito
- Mother's Day in the Butterfly House
- All Manner of Wonders
- Acknowledgments
