The House of Song

by Wagoner, David

• ISBN13: 9780252070488
• ISBN10: 0252070488
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

"As a recipient of Poetry's Levinson Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize and a nominee for the American Book Award and National Book Award, David Wagoner is one of this country's most celebrated poets. In The House of Song, he offers a hundred new poems in six parts. At turns elegiac, comic, and nostalgic, these poems venture to the seemingly infinitesimal points where people, legends, and culture collide with nature, memory, and action. With characteristic wit and brevity, Wagoner chronicles the material invasions of the natural world, reconsidering Thoreau amid ruminations on voyeurs and destroyers, slug watchers and moth collectors. The House of Song asserts Wagoner's place among the finest of American poets, past and present."

Table of Contents

1
The House of Song	3	(2)
Moth Flight	5	(2)
The Words-and-Music Men	7	(2)
For Laurel and Hardy on My Workroom Wall	9	(1)
Wallace Stevens on His Way to Work	10	(1)
The Lessons of Water	11	(1)
Lachrymals	12	(1)
The Four Fates	13	(2)
Forgetting the Magic Words	15	(1)
High Steel	16	(2)
Aerial Act	18	(2)
On Thin Ice	20	(2)
Landscaping Rocks for Sale	22	(1)
The Landscaper	23	(2)
The Joggers	25	(2)
A Girl Playing in a Sandbox	27	(1)
God and Man and Flower	28	(1)
Dr. Frankenstein's Garden	29	(2)
The Collectors	31	(2)
Benjamin Franklin and the Dust Devil	33	(1)
The First Passenger Balloon Ascension, 1783	34	(2)
Meeting the Ditchdigger	36	(2)
Slug	38	(2)
Meditation	40	(2)
The Weather Man	42	(2)
A Homily for the Preservation of the Spirit in a Time of Dread	44	(1)
Waiting Out a Storm on a Deserted Farm	45	(2)
Looking into a Crystal Ball	47	(1)
In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree	48	(2)
The Book of Moonlight	50	(3)
2
My Father and the Hydrostatic Paradox	53	(2)
Speeding	55	(2)
Thinking of What to Say	57	(2)
For a Mockingbird	59	(2)
In a Country Cemetery	61	(2)
Wild Cucumber	63	(2)
The Path	65	(2)
Keeping Quiet at the Benedictine Abbey	67	(1)
At the Ruins of Baalbek, 1971	68	(2)
Elegy on the First Day of Spring	70	(2)
Our Hands	72	(2)
The End of the Story	74	(2)
Alexandra and the Thunder	76	(2)
Dancing Daughters	78	(1)
Night Light	79	(2)
In the Snow	81	(4)
3
Thoreau and the Stumps	85	(2)
Thoreau and the Body	87	(1)
Thoreau and the Crickets	88	(2)
Thoreau and the Toads	90	(2)
Thoreau and the Catfish	92	(2)
Thoreau Wading in a River	94	(2)
Thoreau and the Cow	96	(5)
4
In the Experimental Pool	101	(2)
Symposium	103	(2)
Dead Letter from Out of Town	105	(1)
Howl	106	(1)
The Son of a Glover	107	(1)
The Loneliness of the 100-Meter Dash Man	108	(2)
The Actress and the Rat	110	(2)
Backstage	112	(1)
At the Door	113	(2)
Curtain Call	115	(1)
Quick Meditation on a Senior Citizens' Drill Team	116	(1)
Freak	117	(2)
The Brief Appearance of the Equable Man	119	(1)
On Seeing a Street Indian Wearing My Old Dress Suit	120	(1)
In the Kiva at Old Oraibi	121	(1)
The Houses of the Navajo	122	(1)
In the Room Next Door	123	(2)
By the Sea, by the Sea	125	(2)
Witness Protection	127	(4)
5
The Lost Traveler's Dream: A Sequence
Making Camp	131	(2)
Crossing a Path	133	(1)
At the Edge of a Cliff	134	(1)
Making a Browse Bed	135	(1)
Staying Here	136	(2)
Found	138	(5)
6
Young Raven	143	(2)
Robber Jay	145	(2)
Owl	147	(1)
Rattlesnake Dance	148	(2)
Cow Dance	150	(2)
For a Grizzly Bear Sleeping	152	(2)
In the Duck Blind	154	(1)
The Teal's Wing	155	(1)
Critical Distance	156	(2)
The Principles of Concealment	158	(2)
Lying in Ambush	160	(1)
Madstone	161	(2)
The Murderer	163	(2)
Dream House	165	(2)
Telling What Happened	167	(2)
That Child	169	(2)
The Sick Child	171	(1)
Carrying the Fire	172	(1)
Making a God	173	(1)
The Elders	174	(2)
The People Who Ate Snow	176	(1)
How It Will Be	177	(2)
Acknowledgments	179