Karl Shapiro : Selected Poems

by Shapiro, Karl Jay

• ISBN13: 9781931082341
• ISBN10: 1931082340
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: Penguin Group USA

Summary

With this eye-opening new collection, selected and introduced by John Updike, Karl Shapiro is restored to his place as one of his generation's freshest and most compelling voices. Here are Shapiro's essential poems: lyrical, iconoclastic, often bitingly funny. Karl Shapiro was an exuberant force in American poetry for more than half a century. This collection, selected and introduced by John Updike, reveals him as one of the enduring voices of his generation. Included are works drawn from more than a dozen of Shapiro's published volumes: early poems like "Drug Store" and "Buick," which revel in the ordinary life of his native Baltimore; selections from Essay on Rime, his tour de force on the craft of poetry; the dignified and moving lyrics, written near the front lines in New Guinea, of V-Letter and Other Poems, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944; candid late musings on subjects like Kleenex, New York City, and Creative Writing. "His feet planted on the substantive," Updike writes in his introduction, Shapiro "could be modest and casual but also bold, with the boldness of truth personally verified." Early and late, he was irreverent, down to earth, and always a master of his craft. Book jacket.

Author Biography

John Updike, editor, is a novelist, short-story writer, poet, and critic whose classic works include the novels Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990).

Table of Contents

Introduction	xvii
from Person, Place and Thing (1942)
Necropolis	1	(1)
Auto Wreck	2	(1)
The Dome of Sunday	3	(2)
Epitaph for John and Richard	5	(1)
Drug Store	6	(1)
Haircut	7	(1)
Mongolian Idiot	8	(1)
Scyros	9	(2)
Elegy for Two Banjos	11	(2)
Buick	13	(1)
The Fly	14	(2)
The Snob	16	(1)
University	17	(1)
Washington Cathedral	18	(2)
Emporium	20	(1)
My Grandmother	21	(1)
October 1	22	(1)
The Confirmation	23	(2)
Honkytonk	25	(1)
Hollywood	26	(2)
The Birds	28	(1)
A Cut Flower	29	(1)
Terminal	30	(2)
Conscription Camp	32	(3)
Giantess	35	(1)
from The Place of Love (1942)
My Hair	36	(1)
The Tongue	37	(1)
from V-Letter and Other Poems (1944)
Aside	38	(2)
Sydney Bridge	40	(1)
Troop Train	41	(1)
Christmas Eve: Australia	42	(1)
Full Moon: New Guinea	43	(1)
Sunday: New Guinea	43	(1)
Nigger	44	(2)
Franklin	46	(1)
The Interlude	47	(2)
The Bed	49	(1)
The Synagogue	50	(3)
Birthday Poem	53	(2)
The Leg	55	(1)
Movie	56	(2)
Elegy for a Dead Soldier	58	(6)
Crusoe	64	(1)
The Intellectual	65	(2)
Spider	67	(1)
Satire: Anxiety	67	(2)
V-Letter	69	(3)
from Essay on Rime (1945)	72	(111)
from Trial of a Poet (1947)
Homecoming	76	(1)
Demobilization	77	(2)
The Conscientious Objector	79	(2)
The Convert	81	(1)
An Urn of Ashes	82	(2)
from Recapitulations	84	(4)
The Dirty Word	88	(1)
Words for a Child's Birthday	89	(2)
Air Liner	91	(2)
The Progress of Faust	93	(2)
from Trial of a Poet	95	(2)
from Poems 1940--1953 (1953)
Israel	97	(1)
Ego	98	(1)
The Figurehead	99	(1)
Glass Poem	100	(1)
The Minute	101	(1)
Love for a Hand	102	(1)
The Phenomenon	103	(1)
French Postcard	104	(1)
Going to School	105	(4)
from Poems of a Jew (1958)
The Alphabet	109	(1)
The Olive Tree	110	(1)
The First Time	111	(1)
The Crucifix in the Filing Cabinet	112	(1)
The Murder of Moses	113	(3)
from The Bourgeois Poet (1964)
The Bourgeois Poet	116	(1)
Sub-Division	116	(1)
Garrison State	117	(2)
Office Love	119	(1)
High School	120	(1)
The Dermatologist	121	(1)
Absences	122	(1)
Third Class, Queen Mary	123	(1)
Tahiti 1936	124	(1)
Burlesk	125	(1)
Bouquet	126	(1)
War Movies	127	(1)
Fox Hole	128	(1)
The Missal	129	(1)
I Am an Atheist Who Says His Prayers	130	(3)
Lower the Standard	133	(1)
Prosody	134	(1)
The Funeral of Poetry	135	(2)
from Selected Poems (1968)
Manhole Covers	137	(1)
Western Town	137	(1)
New Museum	138	(2)
The Poetry Reading	140	(2)
Tornado Warning	142	(1)
Human Nature	143	(1)
California Winter	144	(2)
from White-Haired Lover (1968)
You Played Chopin	146	(1)
How Do I Love You?	146	(1)
You Lay Above Me	147	(1)
O My Beloved	147	(1)
Aubade	148	(3)
from Adult Bookstore (1976)
Adult Bookstore	151	(1)
Girls Working in Banks	152	(1)
California Petrarchan	153	(1)
Garage Sale	154	(1)
My Father's Funeral	155	(3)
My Fame's Not Feeling Well	158	(1)
To Lesbia	159	(1)
from Collected Poems 1940--1978 (1978)
W.H.A.	160	(1)
The Accountant	161	(1)
Mozart's Jew	162	(1)
from New & Selected Poems 1940--1986 (1987)
At Auden's Grave	163	(3)
Vietnam Memorial	166	(1)
And Now, the Weather...	166	(1)
Grant's Tomb Revisited	167	(2)
Homewreck	169	(1)
The Back	170	(1)
Retirement	171	(1)
from The Old Horsefly (1992)
The Old Horsefly	172	(1)
Whitman	173	(1)
Kleenex	174	(1)
Creative Writing	175	(1)
Ovid	176	(1)
July 7, 1978	177	(1)
Future-Present	178	(1)
``There's One''	179	(4)
Biographical Note	183	(2)
Note on the Texts	185	(2)
Notes	187	(4)
Index of Titles and First Lines	191