Mulroney & Others

by Wormser, Baron

• ISBN13: 9781889330396
• ISBN10: 1889330396
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-02-01
• Publisher: Sarabande Books

Summary

Baron Wormser, a master of the persona poem, is well known for his empathic exploration of possible lives. This fifth collection of poetry by this "fiction writer in a poet's body," includes an examination of his own life as well. Mulroney & Others provides glimpses of Wormser's childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, as well as accounts of Vietnam vets and draft dodgers, socialites and outcasts. Loyal readers will welcome his trademark poise, the elegant balance he achieves with understatement both metrically deft and intellectually intricate. These poems prove Anais Nin's insight that "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Wormser's invitation to engage ourselves in seeing is irresistible, especially as he models the process with such impassioned interest. "'I know,' everyone is saying at once/To one another and the word-riddled universe. . . ." he writes. His poems tempt us to trade the obscurity of facile assumption for the powerful illumination of wonder. In Wormser's words, the universe is irrefutably personal.Baron Wormser is the author of four previous collections of poetry: The White Words (Houghton Mifflin, 1983), Good Trembling (Houghton Mifflin, 1985), Atoms, Soul Music, and Other Poems (Paris Review Editions, 1989), When (Sarabande Books, 1997), and co-author of Teaching the Art of Poetry: The Moves (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999). His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of journals including The Paris Review, Sewanee Review, The New Republic, Harper's, and Poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lives with his wife in Hallowell, Maine."The particular gift in Wormser's work is in the narrative. . . . He is poised to record, to expose, to express, not to pounce. The language can sometimes ambush a reader with wonder, but Wormser never breaks a sweat. . . . Mulroney & Others is one of those rare books of poetry that will have resonance in the lives of nearly every reader. . . (he) mixes just the right amount of cleverness with a smart appreciation for language, humor, humanity, pain and love."-Ba

Table of Contents

Mulroney	1	(2)
The Tape	3	(2)
Zbigniew Herbert's Mr. Cogito Meets Emily Dickinson: A Literary Romance	5	(2)
Goethe in Kentucky (1932)	7	(2)
Junior High	9	(2)
Niagara	11	(2)
Briefly	13	(2)
In the Country of the Pointed Firs (1972)	15	(1)
Schoolhouse Blues	16	(1)
In the Grocery	17	(2)
After Midnight	19	(1)
Imagining Napalm: Harvard Square Summer (1967)	20	(2)
Angel of Death	22	(1)
The Haircut	23	(1)
Bernard Baruch	24	(3)
Kid	27	(1)
Vaudeville	28	(1)
Meditating (New England, 1892)	29	(2)
For Jane Kenyon	31	(1)
Melancholy Baby	32	(2)
Son (1957)	34	(1)
Bobbin'	35	(1)
January	36	(2)
An Academic Family in the 50s	38	(2)
Satan Reviews the Cuban Missile Crisis	40	(2)
Spirits of the Mall	42	(2)
Barmaid	44	(2)
Explication du Texte	46	(2)
Les Demoiselles	48	(2)
Fatality	50	(2)
A Benediction (Homage to Marguerite Yourcenar)	52	(2)
Poem for My Son	54	(1)
Draft Morning (1969)	55	(3)
Acting Out	58	(2)
Jack, Age 23, in Canada (1972)	60	(2)
Route One-Thirty	62	(1)
Family Affairs	63	(2)
Portrait of the Artist	65	(2)
O Mother Europe (1931)	67	(1)
Furniture	68	(2)
News	70	(2)
The Great Depression	72	(2)
For the Yiddish Poets	74	(2)
Christmas	76	(1)
A Roman	77	(1)
Homage to	78	(1)
J. D. Salinger
Dating a Law Student (1956)	79	(2)
1914	81	(2)
The Blue Note	83	(1)
MIA---Missing in America	84	(2)
Immolation (1964)	86	(3)
The Author	89