The Narrows

by Tobin, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9781884800597
• ISBN10: 1884800599
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-10-21
• Publisher: Four Way Books

Summary

Coming of age in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge, these poems explore what it is to be an Irish American Catholic; a dutiful son of hard drinking, sometimes hilarious and sometimes tragic parents; a son of Brooklyn; and, too, deeply rooted to the country of his ancestors, Ireland. Dark, funny, and sometimes troubling, these poems, always accessible, track a life well lived and felt.

Author Biography

DANIEL TOBIN is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Where the World is Made (1999) and Double Life (2004); a book of criticism, Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney (1999); and numerous essays on poetry. Among his awards are the Discovery/The Nation Award, The Robert Penn Warren Award, The Robert Frost Fellowship, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize, The Greensboro Review Prize, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is Chair of the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston.

Table of Contents

Proem: Double Life,	3	(4)
I. The Narrows
The Narrows,	7	(14)
II. From the Country of the Dead
The Pier,	21	(5)
My Mother at the House of Her Father's Fathers,	26	(5)
III. Bay Ridge
Prelude: The Narrows,	31	(1)
The Avenue,	32	(1)
Scar,	33	(1)
Broadcast,	34	(1)
Blackout,	35	(1)
The Apartments,	36	(1)
Stickball,	37	(1)
St. Anselm's,	38	(1)
Long Jump Pit,	39	(1)
Eye-Full Tower,	40	(1)
Barkaloo Cemetery,	41	(1)
Shore Road,	42	(1)
Skytop,	43	(1)
Brown-Eyed Girl,	44	(3)
IV. A Coat
A Coat,	47	(2)
A Life Not Lived,	49	(1)
Pallbearers at Emily Dickinson's Funeral,	50	(2)
At the Lower East Side Tenement Museum,	52	(2)
The Other Half,	54	(2)
The Country,	56	(4)
The Island,	60	(2)
Lost Garden Elegies,	62	(6)
Aftermath,	68	(1)
A Mosque in Brooklyn,	69	(4)
V. At the Tree of Many, One
At the Tree of Many, One,	73	(8)
VI. Pearl Court
The House,	81	(2)
My Grandmother's Apartment,	83	(2)
Hope Chest,	85	(2)
Inheritors,	87	(1)
Bridge View,	88	(1)
Back Window,	89	(1)
Prospect,	90	(5)
VII. Thinking of Meade Mountain
Thinking of Meade Mountain,	95	(6)
VIII. Home in Transit
According to Legend,	101	(1)
A Chalk Primavera on Eden Quay,	102	(1)
Ballsbridge, Dark Night,	103	(2)
The Lift,	105	(1)
Banshee,	106	(1)
Inishboffin Suite,	107	(3)
A Dolmen in the Burren,	110	(1)
Two Blackouts,	111	(2)
In the Green-Wood,	113	(6)
IX. Twentieth Century Limited
Twentieth Century Limited,	119	(10)
X. The Ring
Near Hag's Head,	129	(1)
A Cemetery in Brooklyn,	130	(3)
The Book of Ruth,	133	(3)
502 Schenck Avenue,	136	(1)
The Dock Road,	137	(2)
Crossings,	139	(1)
St. John,	140	(3)
The Ring,	143	(6)
XI. The Rainbow Cafe
The Rainbow Cafe,	149	(5)
Drinking with My Father at Muse's Bar,	154	(2)
Galilee,	156	(2)
My Mother's Eye,	158	(2)
Elegy,	160	(2)
Afterlives,	162	(5)
XII. Outerbridge Crossing
Outerbridge Crossing,	167	(7)
Notes,	174