Keeping My Name

by Tufariello, Catherine; Fink, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780896725294
• ISBN10: 0896725294
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Texas Tech Univ Pr

Summary

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist * Booklist Editors' Choice 2004 "In immaculate, subtly musical meter and rhyme, Tufariello conjures scenes of the city, modern history, marriage and family, love in the Italian Renaissance, and the women of the Bible that fully engage the mind and the heart."--Booklist "For formalists, this author comes as a gift, a poet fully in charge of her forms, subtle and controlled. She embraces the villanele, Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets, the measured quatrain, rhymed couplets. . .what excites the reader is watching Tufariello use the limits of these traditions to stretch her creativity."--Camille-Yvette Welsch, ForeWord Magazine "Tufariello ranges widely in form and subject, all with such aplomb that no less an expert than Richard Wilbur praises her 'plain, supple eloquence' and 'easy command of rhyme, measure, and form.' . . . Resourcefulness and restraint are rare qualities in contemporary poetry. By the former, I mean the ability to find new ways to approach topics that others have done, new ways to put traditional forms through their paces. As for the latter quality, Tufariello's poems provide such eloquent examples that I feel no need to explain further."--R. S. Gwynn, The Hudson Review "The poet addresses lovers lost and gained, children not yet born, and friends who have left her too early. . . . Several poems in this collection [take] the breath away. . . . It is unusual for a modern poet to use rhyme so deftly and dangerously. These poems have an addictive rhythm."--Hartford Courant Keeping My Name bears the stamp of an assured poet whose work has long appeared in major journals and anthologies. Though Tufariello is known in New Formalist circles as one of the most accomplished younger poets working in meter and rhyme, her poems will appeal broadly to readers of contemporary poetry. With a distinctive blend of craft and deep feeling, clarity and subtle thought, Tufariello gives new resonance to the historical and mythic past by drawing larger significance and universal themes from contemporary life. Keeping My Name reflects a particular interest in and compassion for the lives of women, past and present. Its five sections offer a variety of repasts. One brings women of the Old and New Testaments to life with freshness and immediacy. Another traces the dissolution of a marriage; a third, the experience--rarely represented in poetry--of infertility and its high-tech treatment. Many poems are personal, but none merely confessional. At center, counterpoising the contemporary poems of love and grief, is a series of translations from Petrarch and other classic Italian love poets. Tufariello's poems address loss and longing, yet discover joy in everyday things--a walrus being fed at an aquarium, a small girl dancing at a wedding, a basketball game on a city playground. Her warmth, tempered by wit, is void of sentimentality. Readers who appreciate well-made, accessible, and memorable poems will find much to savor here. Catherine Tufariello's enchanting and warmly crafted poems celebrate, to use her phrase, "small ordinary decencies." More important, they show how such decencies nourish the faith that we are, individually and collectively, capable of progress, fulfillment, and redemption. Mixing personal reflection, Biblical myth, and history, this book is a remarkable debut by one of our very finest younger poets. --Timothy Steele From "The Walrus at Coney Island": All watchers gasp together as he dives, The clumsy fore fins clever now as knives, The dark head bobbing in the dazzling spray Of sun-shot water, like a child's at play. So this is what he is, has always been-- A gleaming, sleekly muscled submarine, Lithe as a dancer, roguish as a boy, Corkscrewing downward with what looks like joy.

Author Biography

Catherine Tufariello has taught literature and writing at Cornell, the College of Charleston, and the University of Miami.

Table of Contents

Series editor's introduction	xi
I. FREE TIME
Free Time	3	(1)
February 18, 1943	4	(2)
Elegy for Alice	6	(2)
Dana Dancing	8	(1)
The Walrus at Coney Island	9	(1)
Epitaph for a Stray	10	(1)
Crossed Wires	11	(4)
II. SEASONS OF THE MOON
Chemist's Daughter	15	(1)
Moving Day	16	(1)
Two Trees	17	(2)
Snow Angel	19	(2)
Insomnia	21	(1)
Seasons of the Moon	22	(1)
The Mirror	23	(1)
Ghost Children	24	(1)
The Worst of It	25	(1)
Pentimento	26	(1)
Plot Summary	27	(1)
Keeping My Name	28	(5)
III. "GO, GRIEVING RHYMES . . ."
Cavalcanti's Beltà di donna e di saccente core	33	(1)
Guinizelli's Al cor gentil ripara sempre Amore	34	(2)
From Petrarch's Canzoniere
S' amor non è, che dunque è quel ch' io sento?	36	(1)
Se la mia vita da l'aspro tormento	37	(1)
I di miei più leggier che nesun cervo	38	(1)
Or ài fatto l'estremo di tua possa	39	(1)
Ite, rime dolenti, al duro sasso	40
IV. ANNUNCIATIONS
Lorenzo Lotto's Annunciation	43	(1)
A Proposal in the Cleveland Museum, Winter 2000	44	(2)
No Angel	46	(6)
Rebekah I	52	(1)
Rebekah II	53	(1)
Mary Magdalene	54	(1)
The Feast of Tabernacles	55	(4)
V. THE WAITING ROOM
Zero at the Bone	59	(2)
The Waiting Room	61	(1)
Ultrasound	62	(1)
Fruitless	63	(1)
Useful Advice	64	(2)
In Glass	66	(1)
After All	67	(1)
Florida's Flowers	68	(3)
First Contact	71	(1)
The Dream of Extra Room	72	(1)
Twenty Weeks	73	(3)
This Child	76	(1)
Useful Advice, the Sequel	77	(1)
Liana's Song	78	(1)
First Sight	79