Summary

Selected as a "Best Book of the Year" by the Los Angeles Times and Booklist magazine, and winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award, Cool, Calm, and Collected is a tour de force from one of the nation's premier poets. For four decades, Carolyn Kizer has been one of the most influential, controversial, and recognizable figures in American poetry. A feminist practically before the term existed, she has never been afraid to say what is on her mind, writing poems infused with sexual politics, social awareness, and literary irreverence. Cool, Calm, and Collected was reprinted four times in cloth and became one of Copper Canyon Press's bestselling titles. It features new poems, work from all of Kizer's previous volumes, translations "from a dizzying number of poets" (New York Times), and several prose pieces, including "Pakistan Journal" and "My Good Father." . . . We women, Outside, breathing dust, are still the Other. The evening sun goes down; time to fix dinner. "You women have no major phiolosophers." We know. But we remain philosophic, and say with the Saint, "Let me enter my chamber and sing my songs of love." -from "Pro Femina" "We cannot do without Kizer and never could-here are four decades of compelling reasons why."-Los Angeles Times "Carolyn Kizer is a national treasure."-San Francisco Chronicle "The book will appeal to poetry lovers and activists of all stripes."-Publishers Weekly "No library should be without this collection."-Booklist (starred review) Carolyn Kizer, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, was educated at Sarah Lawrence College. She co-founded Poetry Northwest; served as the first director of the Literature Program at the National Endowment for the Arts; was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets; and has been a poet-in-residence at Columbia, Stanford, and Princeton. Kizer lives in Sonoma, California.

Author Biography

Carolyn Kizer is one of the most influential and recognizable figures in American poetry: as an early feminist, as a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, as an editor, and as the first director of the National Endowment for the Arts' literary program. Her poetry has coursed sexual politics, social awareness, and literary reverence (and irreverence) with grace and flair. Cool, Calm and Collected, Kizer's long-awaited collected poems, gathers new poems together with selections from previous volumes, several of which have been unavailable for many years.

The Fifties
The Ungrateful Garden	p. 5
The Intruder	p. 6
The Worms	p. 8
By the Riverside	p. 10
A Widow in Wintertime	p. 12
One to Nothing	p. 14
The Death of a Public Servant	p. 16
Complex Autumnal	p. 18
What Was in a Name	p. 20
Through a Glass Eye, Lightly	p. 21
The Suburbans	p. 23
Not Writing Poems about Children	p. 26
Hera, Hung from the Sky	p. 28
Epithalamion	p. 30
Persephone Pauses	p. 32
The Flower	p. 35
Columns and Caryatids	p. 38
The Damnation	p. 41
The Old Gods	p. 43
The Apostate	p. 46
Tying One On in Vienna	p. 49
A Muse of Water	p. 53
Afterthoughts of Donna Elvira	p. 56
Plaint of the Poet in an Ignorant Age	p. 57
Birthday Poem for a Childless Man	p. 59
The Great Blue Heron	p. 61
Lovemusic	p. 63
The Patient Lovers	p. 64
Love Song	p. 65
To My Friend, behind Walls	p. 66
A Poet's Household	p. 68
From an Artist's House	p. 69
Linked Verses	p. 71
On a Line from Julian	p. 73
What the Bones Know	p. 74
To a Visiting Poet in a College Dormitory	p. 75
On Rising from the Dead	p. 77
The Sixties
Chinese Imitations
For Jan, in Bar Maria	p. 85
Singing Aloud	p. 86
Amusing Our Daughters	p. 88
Hiding Our Love	p. 89
Night Sounds	p. 90
Summer near the River	p. 91
The Skein	p. 93
Winter Song	p. 94
A Month in Summer
A Month in Summer	p. 99
Pro Femina
Pro Femina (parts One, Two, Three)	p. 113
The Seventies
Where I've Been All My Life	p. 121
The Dying Goddess	p. 125
The Copulating Gods	p. 127
The Way We Write Letters	p. 129
The Italian Kittens	p. 130
Streets of Pearl and Gold	p. 132
The Good Author	p. 136
Two Poets by the Lake	p. 138
Poem, Small and Delible	p. 141
Lines to Accompany Flowers for Eve	p. 143
The First of June Again	p. 145
Season of Lovers and Assassins	p. 147
The Wars in Sweden	p. 149
Voyager	p. 150
On a Line from Sophocles	p. 155
A Long Line of Doctors	p. 156
Dixit Insipiens	p. 158
Semele Recycled	p. 160
The Blessing	p. 164
Dangerous Games	p. 168
Race Relations	p. 169
Children	p. 171
In the First Stanza	p. 174
Food of Love	p. 176
Running Away from Home	p. 178
A Muse	p. 185
Dream of a Large Lady	p. 191
Reading Your Poems in Your House While You Are Away	p. 193
Postcards from Rotterdam	p. 195
For My Daughter	p. 197
For Sappho/After Sappho	p. 199
October 1973	p. 204
The Eighties
Afternoon Happiness	p. 211
Medicine	p. 213
How It Passes	p. 215
After Basho	p. 217
Threatening Letter	p. 218
Cupid and Venus	p. 220
Antique Father	p. 221
Fanny (part Four of Pro Femina)	p. 223
Exodus	p. 231
To My Friend Who Rhymes with Peace	p. 234
For Jan As the End Draws Near	p. 235
Thrall	p. 237
Bitch	p. 239
Promising Author	p. 241
The Glass	p. 243
The Light	p. 244
The Gift	p. 245
Heart's Limbo	p. 246
My Good Father	p. 248
Horseback	p. 259
To an Unknown Poet	p. 261
The Valley of the Fallen	p. 263
Ingathering	p. 267
Election Day, 1984	p. 269
Final Meeting	p. 270
The Nineties
Gerda	p. 275
Pearl	p. 280
Reunion	p. 283
An American Beauty	p. 284
On a Line from Valery	p. 287
Suppressing the Evidence	p. 288
Fearful Women	p. 290
Halation	p. 292
Mud Soup	p. 295
Twelve O'Clock	p. 297
Parents' Pantoum	p. 302
Arthur's Party	p. 304
In Hell with Virg and Dan	p. 305
Lost in Translation	p. 309
Cultural Evolution	p. 311
Medicine 11	p. 312
Poem for Your Birthday	p. 313
Marriage Song	p. 315
Index, a Mountain	p. 317
A Song for Muriel	p. 320
Anniversaries: Claremont Avenue, from 1945	p. 321
Fin-de-Siecle Blues	p. 325
New Poems
Trio	p. 333
In the Night	p. 334
Shalimar Gardens	p. 335
Second Time Around	p. 336
Days of 1986	p. 338
The Oration	p. 339
Eleutheria	p. 340
Union of Women	p. 343
The Silent Man	p. 344
The Ashes	p. 346
The Erotic Philosophers (part Five of Pro Femina)	p. 348
Carrying Over
Introduction	p. 357
Classical Chinese
Tu Fu to Li Po	p. 363
My Home Town	p. 366
For the Prince in Exile	p. 367
Dejeuner sur l'herbe	p. 368
Lo Yu Park	p. 369
The Meandering Biver Poems	p. 371
Thwarted	p. 375
Adviser to the Court	p. 377
Banishment	p. 381
A Visit in Winter	p. 382
Testament	p. 384
A Present for Tu Fu from Li Po	p. 388
Spring-Gazing Song	p. 389
Weaving Love-Knots	p. 390
Yiddish
Keep Hidden from Me	p. 393
Generations	p. 394
Urdu
Pakistan Journal	p. 399
Bangla Desh: I	p. 427
Bangla Desh: II	p. 428
Bangla Desh: III	p. 429
Elegy for Hassan Nasir	p. 430
Izhab-O-Rasai (Expression and Reach)	p. 431
Elegy	p. 432
Macedonian
Translation	p. 435
Professional Poet	p. 436
Flood at the International Writer's Workshop	p. 438
My Sister's Letter	p. 440
When I Came Back	p. 442
On the Way Back	p. 443
Prostitution	p. 444
Climate and Lyre	p. 445
from Equinox	p. 446
from Samuel	p. 447
French African
Seven Sides and Seven Syllables	p. 451
German
Maryam	p. 461
What Is True	p. 462
Romanian
Tirade for the Next-to-Last Act	p. 465
Modern Chinese
The Singing Flower	p. 469
Bits of Reminiscence	p. 476
Unexpected Meeting	p. 477
Missing You	p. 478
"?.!"	p. 479
To the Oak	p. 481
To __________	p. 483
When You Come past My Window	p. 484
Returning Home	p. 486
Perhaps...	p. 487
Brother, I Am Here	p. 488
Notes	p. 491
About the Author	p. 501
Index of Titles	p. 503
Index of First Lines	p. 506
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

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