Beyond Silence

by Hoffman, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780807128619
• ISBN10: 0807128619
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Summary

Accepting an award for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Daniel Hoffman wrote, "Amid private sufferings and outrage at the brutalities of public life, it is gaiety that sustains us, and love, and the imagination's power to create from both deprivation and delight." This collection embodies those emotions and that imaginative power. Hoffman's verse has always exulted in the resources of language, as sensuous in sound as in response to the natural world. Beyond Silence, to be published on Hoffman's eightieth birthday, presents his shorter poems culled from eight previous collections, plus several new poems. Here, rather than in chronological order, they appear thematically and invite the reader to partake of the pleasures that characterize this distinguished poet's verse: "clarity, grace where desired, accuracy of visual detail and dialogue, and a formal mastery so deft that playfulness comes easily" (Fred Chappell).

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
The Poem	1	(222)
I
In the Days of Rin-Tin-Tin	5	(1)
The Twentieth Century	6	(1)
Flushing Meadows, 1939	7	(1)
The seals in Penobscot Bay	8	(2)
Blood	10	(1)
The Battle of Hastings	11	(2)
A Special Train	13	(1)
Crop-Dusting	14	(1)
The Pursued	15	(1)
The Victor	16	(1)
Shaking the President's Hand	17	(1)
A Historian	18	(2)
In Memory of Lewis Corey	20	(2)
The Princess Casamassima	22	(2)
Power	24	(2)
Violence	26	(1)
Mean Street	27	(2)
A Sidewalk Scene	29	(1)
The City of Satisfactions	30	(3)
Rats	33	(2)
Egg	35	(1)
Crack!	36	(1)
Mother	37	(1)
Ants	38	(1)
A Riddle	39	(1)
After God	40	(5)
II
Aphrodite	45	(1)
The Flutist's Breath Turns Reverie to Sound	46	(1)
First Sight	47	(1)
Musebaby	48	(1)
It Cannot Come Because Desired	49	(1)
Yours	50	(1)
Night Fishing	51	(1)
Alone	52	(1)
A Marriage	53	(1)
As I Was Going to Saint-Ives	54	(2)
Reasons	56	(1)
Who Was It Came	57	(1)
Over the rim	58	(1)
Another Border	59	(1)
Ignorant of Source	60	(1)
In the Beginning	61	(2)
The Hill of Tara	63	(1)
In That High House	64	(1)
Burning Bush	65	(1)
Folk Tale	66	(2)
Ode to Joy	68	(5)
III
Incubus	73	(1)
An armada of thirty whales	74	(1)
Cape Breton	75	(2)
At Provincetown	77	(1)
Icarus, Icarus	78	(1)
That the Pear Delights Me Now	79	(2)
The Larks	81	(1)
The Clams	82	(1)
Old Bug Up There	83	(1)
The voice of the woodthrush, played at half speed	84	(1)
Auricle's Oracle	85	(1)
Shell	86	(1)
Ephemeridae	87	(1)
The Everlasting	88	(1)
Exploration	89	(2)
Safari	91	(2)
Climbing Katahdin	93	(2)
Eagles	95	(2)
Before the Fall	97	(1)
Blizzard	98	(2)
A Meeting	100	(2)
In Provence	102	(1)
The Wastrel	103	(1)
Moving among the Creatures	104	(1)
Inviolable	105	(1)
Signatures	106	(3)
IV
Identities	109	(1)
O Personages	110	(1)
Himself	111	(1)
His Steps	112	(1)
A Solitary	113	(1)
He Was the First Who Had Returned	114	(1)
The Last Arrival	115	(1)
When My Wiser Brother	116	(1)
The Way He Went	117	(1)
The Companion	118	(1)
A True Confession	119	(2)
Vows	121	(2)
A Stone	123	(4)
V
Another Country	127	(1)
Evidence	128	(1)
The Tale-Teller	129	(1)
Stop the Deathwish! Stop it! Stop!	130	(1)
A Barn Burnt in Ohio	131	(1)
The Cape Racer	132	(2)
The Hermit of Cape Rosier	134	(2)
At Don's Garage	136	(2)
Old Reprobate	138	(2)
Lines for Scott Nearing	140	(1)
Scott Nearing's Ninety-Eighth Year	141	(2)
Bob	143	(4)
VI
I Am the Sun	147	(1)
Aubade	148	(1)
Summer Solstice	149	(1)
Singing	150	(1)
The Sounds	151	(1)
The Gift of Tongues	152	(1)
Speech	153	(2)
The Peaceable Kingdom	155	(2)
On the Industrial Highway	157	(1)
The Center of Attention	158	(3)
The Great American Novel	161	(1)
Possession	162	(1)
A Dreamer	163	(1)
A Dread	164	(1)
A Woe	165	(1)
The Summerhouse	166	(1)
Evening	167	(1)
Brainwaves	168	(1)
Thought I Was Dying	169	(1)
A Resurrection	170	(1)
Emblems	171	(4)
VII
Fables	175	(1)
On First Looking into Lattimore's Homer	176	(1)
Poe's Tomb	177	(1)
Crossing Walt Whitman Bridge	178	(3)
Snatches for Charles Ives	181	(1)
Mark Twain, 1909	182	(1)
Concordance	183	(2)
Instructions to a Medium, to be transmitted to the shade of W. B. Yeats . . .	185	(2)
Her Obedient Servant	187	(1)
Words for Dr. Williams	188	(1)
The Translator's Party	189	(2)
A Letter to W. H. Auden	191	(2)
The Sonnet	193	(2)
Delusions	195	(1)
Lines for Jack Clemo	196	(1)
High Society	197	(6)
VIII
Summer	203	(1)
A New Birth	204	(1)
Treasure	205	(1)
A Visitation	206	(1)
In the Pitch of Night	207	(1)
A Comfort	208	(1)
Devotion	209	(1)
Literature	210	(1)
In the Graeco-Roman Room	211	(1)
First Flight	212	(1)
The Finish	213	(2)
Saturday	215	(1)
Owed to Dejection	216	(1)
Breathing Purely	217	(1)
At Evening	218	(1)
Going	219	(1)
Who We Are	220	(2)
Called Back	222	(1)
A Witness	223	(2)
Notes	225