Greetings : Selected Poems

by Claus, Hugo

• ISBN13: 9780151009008
• ISBN10: 0151009007
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-12-05
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

The first English-language collection of poems by this major Flemish writer, Greetings contains work from more than six decades of Hugo Claus's career. Uncompromising and irreverent, Claus writes about postwar politics and society, about race and class, love and sex, art and literature. This volume is sure to appeal to anyone interested in the avant-garde of the last half-century-and to anyone interested in poetry that continues to be provocative, pertinent, and compelling. Year of atrocities, year of cathode-ray tube and stock market report,Year of milk and honey if you're asleep,Year that sticks in your stomach if you're awake,Sweet year, good year for sleepwalkers . . .Year that freezes the smile.It was in that year I went to live in a villagewith books, a wife and a childwho growswhile I talk about the tigers in the East.- F R O M " 1 9 6 5 "

Author Biography

HUGO CLAUS is the author of numerous plays, essays, books of poetry, and novels. He was awarded the Netherlands' most prestigious literary award for his poetry. He has also written, directed, and acted in many films and lives in Antwerp.

Table of Contents

About You	1	(1)
Without Form of Process	2	(3)
The Joyous and Unforeseen Week	5	(1)
At Home	6	(1)
Exercises	7	(6)
Sayings	13	(1)
Picture Puzzle	14	(1)
Fifties	15	(2)
Chet Baker Sings	17	(2)
In Memory of Ferdi	19	(1)
April in Paris	20	(4)
1965	24	(2)
Still Now	26	(10)
Statue in Ostend	36	(1)
Gistel-Bij-Brugge	37	(1)
On the Quay	38	(2)
The Disease of Van der Goes	40	(2)
In Flanders Fields	42	(1)
Memorial Statue in West Flanders	43	(1)
Anthropological	44	(1)
The Farmers	45	(2)
West Flanders	47	(2)
Home	49	(6)
Caligula	55	(1)
A Rendezvous	56	(1)
Montale's ``Small Testament''	57	(2)
Lucretius	59	(1)
His Prayers	60	(5)
His Notes for ``Genesis 1.1''	65	(3)
The Mother	68	(2)
The Death of His Ancestor	70	(3)
Elephant	73	(2)
Dante and I	75	(2)
Theater	77	(2)
A Strange Day	79	(1)
The Stress-Word: House	80	(2)
The Weather	82	(1)
I Write You Down	83	(1)
Simple	84	(1)
Love Me or Leave Me	85	(1)
A Woman	86	(3)
Still	89	(1)
Of the Ground	90	(1)
Sonnets	91	(12)
Toussaint Louverture	103	(1)
Tancredo Infrasonic	104	(4)
Ulysses	108	(1)
Bitter Tastes	109	(1)
Before the Gate	110	(2)
Stele	112	(6)
Description	118	(2)
Etude	120	(2)
Hunt for Mercy	122	(1)
Brother	123	(2)
Robert Desmet	125	(1)
Ostend	126	(2)
What to Speak About	128	(3)
Summer	131