A Map of the Night

by Wagoner, David

• ISBN13: 9780252033148
• ISBN10: 0252033140
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-06-09
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

David Wagoner's wide-ranging poetry buzzes and swells with life. Woods, streams, and fields fascinate him - he happily admits his devotion to Thoreau - but so do people and their habits, dear friends and family, the odd poet, and strangers who become even stranger when looked at closely. In this new collection, Wagoner catches the mixed feelings of a long drive, the sensations of walking against a current, the difficulty of writing poetry with noisily amorous neighbours, and many more uniquely familiar experiences.

Author Biography

David Wagoner is the author of eighteen collections of poems, including The House of Song, Good Morning and Good Night, and Traveling Light, as well as ten novels. He has received numerous honors and awards, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the Fels Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

Table of Contents

My Mother's Poem	p. 3
The First Movie	p. 4
The Other House	p. 6
My Snake	p. 7
The Fan Dance	p. 9
Whistler's Mother	p. 10
The Red Hat	p. 11
The First Touch	p. 13
Elegy for a Safety Man	p. 14
How Johnny Nolan Rescued Me	p. 15
Passing the Road Gang	p. 17
Curtsy	p. 18
Talk	p. 19
Crane Fly	p. 20
Homework in Social Studies	p. 22
Castle	p. 23
My Father's Dance	p. 24
The Invitation	p. 27
What Do I Know?	p. 28
A Lesson from a Student	p. 30
An Assignment for Student Playwrights	p. 31
In the Green Room	p. 32
The Heaven of Actors	p. 33
A Visitor Calls on Joseph Conrad	p. 34
Catfish	p. 35
Mr. Bones	p. 37
On Being Asked by an Assistant to the Governor of the State of the State of Washington for an Appropriate Quotation from a Native American to Conclude an Inaugural Speech	p. 38
An Assignment for Senior Citizens	p. 39
Trying to Write a Poem While the Couple in the Apartment Overhead Make Love	p. 40
The Moth	p. 41
In Youngs Creek	p. 45
Stopping along the Way	p. 46
Blind Instinct	p. 48
That Bird	p. 49
Meadowlark	p. 50
A Pastoral Elegy for a Pasture	p. 51
Watching a Boa Constrictor Yawn	p. 52
The Escaped Gorilla	p. 53
Judging a Hog	p. 54
Thoreau and the Mud Turtle	p. 56
The Elephant's Graveyard	p. 57
Falling Behind	p. 58
The Hunters	p. 59
For the Man Who Taught Tricks to Owls	p. 61
On a Glass of Ale under a Reading Lamp	p. 62
Owning a Creek	p. 65
Up against the Sea	p. 66
The Right Way	p. 67
On an Island	p. 68
Rescue	p. 70
Upstream	p. 71
Letting the Grass Grow under Your Feet	p. 72
Cemetery Grass	p. 73
The Heart of the Forest	p. 74
Free Fall	p. 77
The Presumption of Death	p. 78
For an Old Woman at the Gate	p. 79
Being Taken for a Ride	p. 80
The Driver	p. 81
The Follower	p. 83
At the Scene of Another Crime	p. 85
Stakeout	p. 86
Changing Rooms	p. 87
In the Dark Room	p. 88
What the Houses Were Like Then	p. 91
Man Overboard	p. 92
Moving through Smoke	p. 93
Unarmed Combat	p. 94
Attention	p. 96
At Ease	p. 97
Under Fire	p. 98
Night Reconnaissance	p. 99
The Stand-up Cell	p. 100
What the Stones Say	p. 101
On First Looking through the Wrong End of a Telescope	p. 102
The Center of Gravity	p. 103
An Old Man Sitting Down	p. 104
An Old Man Stacking Firewood	p. 105
The Old Men	p. 106
The Hero	p. 107
The Eve of the Festival of Venus	p. 111
Between Neighbors	p. 117
On Deck	p. 119
Fighting the Blizzard	p. 120
What Billy Graham Said to Me at the Fair	p. 121
In the Emergency Room	p. 122
Weeds	p. 124
An Informal Elegy for Neckties	p. 125
Looking Respectable	p. 126
Doing Six Impossible Things before Breakfast	p. 127
What to Do All Day	p. 128
Thoreau and the Quagmire	p. 129
At the Deep End of the Public Pool	p. 130
In the Graveyard of Major Appliances	p. 131
The Solution to Yesterday's Puzzle	p. 132
Knots	p. 133
Cell Division	p. 134
A Snap Quiz in Body Language	p. 135
For a Man Who Wrote Cunt on a Motel Bathroom Mirror	p. 136
Night Song from the Apartment Below	p. 137
Desire	p. 138
The Spider's Eye	p. 140
The Day I Believed in God	p. 141
A Congo Funeral	p. 143
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.