Research Catalog

Title

The holy surprise of right now : selected and new poems / Samuel Hazo.

Author

Hazo, Samuel, 1928-

Publication

Fayetteville : University of Arkansas Press, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

262 pages; 24 cm

Summary

• For forty years, Samuel Hazo has written a poetry of the world exactly as he sees it: a place where struggles between family members, friends, and nations are endured and sometimes settled by calm assurance; where art and the pursuit of one's talents require a special kind of bravery; where change - the birth of a child, the passing of friends, the death of heroes - is a constant to be solemnly honored and often celebrated.
• From his first book, through the National Book Award finalist Once for the Last Bandit, to his newest poems, Hazo's themes have remained consistent. With each collection he wonders anew at the persistence of mortality in the midst of vibrant living and of love in all our relations.
• In this lithe, metrical lines, he writes with equal ease of Geneva, Switzerland, or Johnstown, Pennsylvania; of the matador Manolete in his dying moments or the innocent eyes of an eleven-year-old son; of the rewards of creating great art or the frustrations and joys of driving a Roosevelt Coupe. With The Holy Surprise of Right Now, Hazo gives his readers a powerful summation of his work to date.

Note

• Includes index.

Contents

• Postscript to Many Letters -- To My Mother -- Preface to a Poetry Reading -- Carol of a Father -- For a Son Who Will Never Be Born -- Parachutist -- For a Poet Who Writes and Wonders Why -- God and Man -- For My Last Class of Freshmen -- Open Letter to a Closed Mind -- Transition -- Goat-song -- To a Bicyclist in France -- Dying Under Drilling -- Circling -- To a Commencement of Scoundrels -- Swim -- Child of Our Bodies -- Bellbeat -- Lost Swimmer -- Voodoo -- Skycoast -- Smithereens -- My Roosevelt Coupe -- The Jacks -- The Torch of Blood -- A Second Dark -- The Darker Noon -- Three Made One -- Quartered -- The First and Only Sailing -- Splitting -- Anticipating Yesterday, Remembering Tomorrow -- Toasts for the Lost Lieutenants -- For V After Z -- Don Juan's Dream of Near and Far Misses -- The Johnstown Fly -- On the Metroliner I Remember That to Be Is to Remember -- Breakfasting with Sophomores -- Radius -- An America Made in Paris -- 1. Signing the Air --
• 2. The Vigil -- 3. Some Words for President Wilson -- 4. Napoleon's -- 5. White Silence -- 6. Elegy for the First Life -- 7. Waiting for Zero -- 8. The Long Passion -- 9. All Colors End in Black -- 10. Understand the Highway, Understand the Country -- 11. The Next Time You Were There -- In the Order of Disappearance -- Castaway -- Between Wars -- Saltpulse -- Regardless -- To Dive -- King Nothing -- In Convoy -- Victorious Losses -- Flying Down the Dream -- The Bearing -- A City Made Sacred Because Your Son's Grandfather Died in It -- The Day Your Son Was Born, It Is -- The Duel That Is Vertical -- Night Letter to America on Switzerland's Independence Day -- Only the New Branches Bloom -- Leafing -- The Toys -- Long Distance Isn't -- Dublin Twilight -- The Silence at the Bottom of the Well -- The Time It Is in Sofia -- Maps for a Son Are Drawn As You Go -- Silence Spoken Here -- No Is the Father of Yes -- The Quiet Proofs of Love --
• Song for the Flies of Fire -- Unto the Islands -- Clean Break -- The Cloak of Fortunatus -- The Last Photograph of John Ciardi -- Harpsong -- Florence by Proxy -- Kak -- Mary Anne's on Any Anniversary -- The First Thirtieth -- Throes -- No Fanfares, No Handshakes, No Salutes -- Understudy -- Mediterraneans -- Who Promised You Tomorrow? -- French Time -- A Man Can Think for Just So Long Before the Body Wants Its Say -- The Time It Takes to See -- In a Time of No Answers -- After Mercutio -- To All My Mariners in One -- Another Word for Time -- The Real Reason for Going Is Not Just to Get There -- Whatever Happened to Defiance? -- On the Eve of the First Shot -- War News Viewed in the Tropics -- The Vow We Breathe -- Lovemakers -- One Flesh -- How Married People Argue -- Two Against the Mountain -- The Year of the Horse -- Not Even Solomon... -- Stingers -- Putting Away the Lost Summer -- The Most You Least Expect -- At Midnight There Are No Horizons --
• Soldiers Despite Ourselves -- Matador -- Once Against a Time -- For Bill -- For Thomas, Who Survived the Axe Blow from Within -- The Horizon at Our Feet -- To Watch with Love's Eyes -- What Waits for Us? -- The Future Is the Past, Read Backward -- Lines at Sea on Love and Death -- Aristotle and the Snow -- All Else But Sharing Is a Sideshow -- Older Ways to See, Younger Ways to Say -- Panache -- The Bodies of Women -- Losers Keepers -- Those Who Have Gone Before But Stay -- To Stop and Be Stopped in Lourmarin -- The Order of Disorder -- Mates -- Failings -- At the Site of the Memorial -- Sweet Money -- Once Upon a Wedding -- And the Lot Fell to Matthias -- The Holy Surprise of Right Now.

ISBN

• 155728427X (cloth : alk. paper)
• 1557284288 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

95052047

OCLC

• 503428224
• ocn503428224

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries