Days of Wonder

by Schulman, Grace

• ISBN13: 9780618086238
• ISBN10: 0618086234
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-02-16
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

In this generous selection, Grace Schulman moves from "the altering light" of earthly experience to the possibility of the miraculous. In the celebrated love poem "The Present Perfect," she sees "wildflowers / poking through gravel cracks in our neighbors" driveway / slender but fortunate, built to last their day," and stanzas about an El Greco painting close with "one beam that God devised, before the / sun, would have shown us the world in one glance." Schulman"s work so far evolves from a vision of unity expressed in her first collection, BURN DOWN THE ICONS. Her second book, HEMISPHERES, opens with a beautiful blessing, and "has that first requisite of poetry -- the world comes alive in the work . . . There is nothing familiar about this poet"s genius" (New York Times Book Review). The selections from FOR THAT DAY ONLY contain vivid scenes of New York in the tradition of Whitman, Crane, and Moore. THE PAINTINGS OF OUR LIVES, Schulman"s most recent book, includes a sonnet sequence that calls on the art of many cultures to illuminate the universality of grief. The ten new poems that complete this breathtaking volume attest to this poet"s gifts for her craft and for the expression of praise.

Author Biography

Grace Schulman is the author many acclaimed books of poetry, including Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. For her poetry she has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the Aiken-Taylor Award, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, New York University’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and three Pushcart prizes. Schulman is a distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. She is a former director of the Poetry Center (1978–1984) and a former poetry editor of The Nation (1971–2006).

Table of Contents

From Burn Down the Icons (1976)
The Abbess of Whitby	3	(1)
Whitby Abbey	4	(1)
Written on a Road Map	5	(1)
Names	6	(1)
Horses on the Grass	7	(1)
That Maple	8	(1)
Street Dance in Barcelona	9	(1)
Surely as Certainty Changes	10	(1)
The Other Side of Humankind	11	(2)
Poetry Editor	13	(3)
The Examination: Remembrance of Words Lost	16	(4)
In the Country of Urgency, There Is a Language	20	(2)
Birds on a Blighted Tree	22	(1)
Epithalamion	23	(1)
Spain, 1964	24	(1)
Burial of a Fisherman in Hydra	25	(1)
Recovery	26	(2)
Burn Down the Icons	28	(2)
Moon	30	(1)
Letter to Helen	31	(6)
From Hemispheres (1984)
Blessed Is the Light	37	(1)
City of Many Names	38	(2)
Let There Be Translators!	40	(1)
Sutton Hoo Ship Burial	41	(2)
Songs of My Fathers	43	(1)
Hemispheres	44	(1)
Easy as Wind	45	(1)
Morning Song	46	(1)
Losses	47	(1)
The Stars and the Moon	48	(1)
The Messenger	49	(1)
The Flight	50	(1)
Images of Gravity	51	(2)
The Marsh	53	(1)
Small Meteor	54	(1)
Instructions for a Journey	55	(4)
From For That Day Only (1994)
For That Day Only	59	(4)
The Present Perfect	63	(3)
After the Division	66	(3)
Footsteps on Lower Broadway	69	(4)
New Netherland, 1654	73	(3)
The Button Box	76	(2)
Home Movie	78	(1)
Site:	79	(2)
Crossing the Square	81	(2)
Notes from Underground: W. H. Auden on the Lexington Avenue IRT	83	(1)
God's Letters	84	(2)
Urban Bestiary	86	(2)
Expulsion	88	(3)
False Move	91	(1)
The Wedding	92	(2)
Julian of Norwich	94	(1)
Rescue in Pescallo	95	(8)
El Greco's Saint James, the Less	103	(1)
Carrion	104	(2)
Two Trees	106	(1)
The Luxembourg Gardens	107	(8)
From The Paintings of Our Lives (2001)
Prayer	115	(2)
God Speaks	117	(1)
Eve's Unnaming	118	(2)
Chaim Soutine	120	(2)
Poem Ending with a Phrase from the Psalms	122	(1)
Psalm for an Anniversary	123	(2)
Balm in Gilead	125	(1)
No Strings	126	(1)
In the Cafe	127	(1)
Carnegie Hill Birdlore	128	(1)
Blue Dawn	129	(1)
December	130	(1)
American Solitude	131	(3)
Storm Watch	134	(1)
Young Woman Drawing, 1801	135	(1)
Black and White	136	(2)
Margaret Fuller	138	(2)
The Dancers	140	(1)
Brooklyn Bridge	141	(3)
Henry James Revisiting, 1904	144	(2)
The Paintings of Our Lives	146	(2)
Last Requests	148	(2)
One Year Without Mother	150	(17)
What Can You Believe?	150	(1)
The Piano	151	(1)
Things	152	(1)
Ceremony	153	(1)
Words in the Dark	154	(1)
Ring Sale	155	(1)
Eagle	156	(1)
The Fall	157	(1)
Keeper	158	(1)
A Goldsmith in His Shop	159	(1)
The Lesson of a Tree	160	(1)
Lamentation Scene	161	(1)
Offering	162	(1)
Credo	163	(1)
Requiem	164	(3)
New Poems
Repentance of an Art Critic, 1925	167	(3)
Flags	170	(1)
1932	171	(2)
Jewish Cemetery, Eleventh Street	173	(1)
Job's Question on Nevis	174	(1)
Long Winter Dusk	175	(1)
Grandmother's Sea	176	(2)
Steps	178	(2)
Bitter Spring	180	(1)
An Empty Surfboard on a Quiet Sea	181	(2)
Notes	183