The Master Letters Poems

by BROCK-BROIDO, LUCIE

• ISBN13: 9780679765998
• ISBN10: 0679765999
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-04-01
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

The title of this richly textured book derives from two of the three mysterious letters left by Emily Dickinson--the ones addressed to "Dear Master." Lucie Brock-Boido has imagined a series of letters echoing devices found in Dickinson's own work. "We feel we are in the presence of something entirely new, " says Bonnie Costello in The Boston Review. "Not even Brock-Broido's wonderful first book, A Hunger, prepares us for this bold encounter." From the Trade Paperback edition.

Author Biography

Lucie Brock-Broido is the author of an earlier book of poems, <b>A Hunger</b> (1988). From 1988 to 1993 she was a Briggs-Copeland poet at Harvard University. She has taught also at the Bennington Writing Seminars and at Priceton University, and is now director of poetry in the Writing Division in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. She lives in New York City and in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Carrowmore	p. 3
Also, None Among Us Has Seen God	p. 4
Rome Beauty	p. 5
Unholy	p. 6
A Brief History of Asylum	p. 8
The Supernatural Is Only the Natural, Disclosed	p. 10
Obsession, Compulsion	p. 11
When the Gods Go, Half-Gods Arrive	p. 12
And Wylde for to Hold	p. 14
At the River Unshin's Edge	p. 16
Carnivorous	p. 18
To a Strange Fashion of Forsaking	p. 19
Did Not Come Back	p. 20
And You Know That I Know Milord That You Know	p. 23
The October Horse	p. 24
Her Habit	p. 26
Prescient	p. 27
Gratitude	p. 28
Dull Weather	p. 29
From the Proscenium	p. 30
Radiating Naivete	p. 32
Bodhisattva	p. 34
Fair Copy from a Fair World	p. 35
His Apprentice	p. 36
You Can't Always Get What You Want	p. 37
Pursuit of Happiness	p. 38
A Glooming Peace This Morning with It Brings	p. 41
Housekeeping	p. 42
Rampion	p. 43
Haute Couture Vulgarity	p. 44
Pompeian	p. 46
Evangelical	p. 47
Into Those Great Countries of the Blue Sky of Which We Don't Know Anything	p. 48
Toxic Gumbo	p. 50
In the Attitude Desired for Exhibition	p. 51
For the Lustrum	p. 52
Treason	p. 54
Like Murder for Small Hay in the Underworld	p. 55
Everybody Has a Heart, Except Some People	p. 56
Moving On in the Dark Like Loaded Boats at Night, Though There Is No Course, There Is Boundlessness	p. 59
Your Cromwell, Your Thomas More	p. 60
I Dont Know Who It Is, That Sings, nor Did I, Would I Tell	p. 62
Grimoire	p. 63
Desunt Non Nulla	p. 64
That Same Vagabond Sweetness	p. 65
Work	p. 66
The Last Passenger Pigeon in the Cincinnati Zoo	p. 68
Everything Husk to the Will	p. 70
The Interrupted Life	p. 72
How Can It Be I Am No Longer I	p. 73
The Sleeping Hollow of His Face Will Be the Straight Pass of Surrendering	p. 75
Am Moor	p. 76
Notes	p. 78
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

"Am Moor"

Am lean against.
Am the heavy hour

Hand at urge,
At the verge of one. Am the ice comb of the tonsured

Hair, am the second
Hand, halted, the velvet opera glove. Am slant. Am fen, the injure

Wind at withins,
Stranger where the storm forms a face if the body stands enough

In a weather this
Cripple & this rough. Am shunt. Was moon-shaped helmet left

In bog, was condition
Of a spirit shorn, childlike & herd. Was Andalusian, ambsace,

Bird. Am kept.
Was keeper of the badly marred, was furious done god, was

Patient, was bad
Luck, was nurse. Ninety badly wounded men lay baying

In the reddened reedy
Hay of Saxony, was surgeon to their flinch & hoop, was hospice

To their torso hall,
Was numinous creature to their dying

Off. Am numb.
Was shoulder & queer luck. Am among.

Was gaunt.
Was--why--or the mutton & moss. Was the rented room.

Was chamber & ambage
& tender & burn. Am esurient, was the hungry form.

Am anatomy.
Was the bleating thing.

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Excerpted from The Master Letters by Lucie Brock-Broido
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.