Summary

"He is one of our finest poets, " Anthony Hecht has said of Donald Justice. Winner most recently of a 1996 Lannan Literary Award, Justice has been the recipient of almost every contemporary grant and prize for poetry, from the Lamont to the Bollingen and the Pulitzer. The present volume replaces his 1980Selected Poemsand contains, in addition, poems from the last 15 years.

Author Biography

Donald Justice was born in Miami, Florida, in 1925. A graduate of The University of Miami, he attended the universities of North Carolina, Stanford, and Iowa. His books include New and Selected Poems; A Donald Justice Reader (1991); The Sunset Maker (1987), a collection of poems, stories and a memoir; Selected Poems (1979), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize; Departures (1973); Night Light (1967); and The Summer Anniversaries (1959), which received the Academy's Lamont Poetry Selection. He has held teaching positions at Syracuse University, The University of California at Irvine, Princeton University, The University of Virginia, and The University of Iowa, and from 1982 until his retirement in 1992, he taught at the University of Florida

New Poems
On a Picture by Burchfield	p. 3
The Artist Orpheus	p. 4
Lorca in California	p. 5
A Variation on Baudelaire's "La Servante au Grand Coeur"	p. 7
Invitation to a Ghost	p. 9
Vague Memory from Childhood	p. 10
The Miami of Other Days	p. 11
On an Anniversary	p. 13
A Man of 1794	p. 14
Body and Soul	p. 15
On a Woman of Spirit Who Taught Both Piano and Dance	p. 17
Dance Lessons of the Thirties	p. 18
Banjo Dog Variations	p. 19
Pantoum of the Great Depression	p. 22
Sadness	p. 24
From the Summer Anniversaries (1960)
The Summer Anniversaries	p. 29
The Poet at Seven	p. 31
Landscape with Little Figures	p. 32
On the Death of Friends in Childhood	p. 33
The Wall	p. 34
A Dream Sestina	p. 35
Sestina on Six Words by Weldon Kees	p. 37
Here in Katmandu	p. 39
Sonnet to My Father	p. 41
Tales from a Family Album	p. 42
Ladies by Their Windows	p. 44
Women in Love	p. 46
A Map of Love	p. 47
Another Song	p. 48
In Bertram's Garden	p. 49
A Winter Ode to the Old Men of Lummus Park, Miami, Florida	p. 50
Counting the Mad	p. 51
On a Painting by Patient B of the Independence State Hospital for the Insane	p. 52
To Satan in Heaven	p. 53
From "Bad Dreams" (1959)
Chorus	p. 55
Speaker	p. 57
Epilogue: to the Morning Light	p. 58
From Night Light (1967)
Time and the Weather	p. 63
To the Unknown Lady Who Wrote the Letters Found in the Hatbox	p. 64
The Grandfathers	p. 65
Ode to a Dressmaker's Dummy	p. 66
But That Is Another Story	p. 67
Heart	p. 68
A Local Storm	p. 69
Variations for Two Pianos	p. 70
Anonymous Drawing	p. 71
American Sketches	p. 72
Elsewheres	p. 74
Men at Forty	p. 76
Early Poems	p. 77
The Thin Man	p. 78
The Man Closing Up	p. 79
For the Suicides	p. 82
The Tourist from Syracuse	p. 84
Bus Stop	p. 86
Incident in a Rose Garden (1)	p. 87
Incident in a Rose Garden (2)	p. 88
In the Greenroom	p. 90
At a Rehearsal of Uncle Vanya	p. 91
Last Days of Prospero	p. 92
From Departures
Fragment: to a Mirror	p. 97
A Letter	p. 98
Portrait with One Eye	p. 99
Self-portrait as Still Life	p. 100
Lethargy	p. 101
The Telephone Number of the Muse	p. 102
From a Notebook	p. 103
Variations on a Text by Vallejo	p. 105
Poem	p. 106
Homage to the Memory of Wallace Stevens	p. 107
Sonatina in Yellow	p. 109
Three Odes	p. 111
Absences	p. 115
From Selected Poems
An Old-fashioned Devil	p. 119
The Return of Alcestis	p. 120
Little Elegy	p. 121
First Death	p. 122
The Sometime Dancer Blues	p. 125
Unflushed Urinals	p. 126
Memories of the Depression Years	p. 127
In the Attic	p. 129
Thinking About the Past	p. 130
Childhood	p. 131
From the Sunset Maker (1987)
Mule Team and Poster	p. 137
My South	p. 138
American Scenes (1904-1905)	p. 141
Nineteenth-century Portrait	p. 143
Young Girls Growing Up (1911)	p. 144
Children Walking Home from School through Good Neighborhood	p. 145
October: A Song	p. 146
Sea Wind: A Song	p. 147
Last Evening: At the Piano	p. 148
Psalm and Lament	p. 149
In Memory of My Friend, the Bassoonist, John Lenox	p. 151
In Memory of the Unknown Poet, Robert Boardman Vaughn	p. 153
Hell	p. 154
Villanelle at Sundown	p. 155
Nostalgia and Complaint of the Grandparents	p. 156
Cinema and Ballad of the Great Depression	p. 158
Nostalgia of the Lakefronts	p. 160
Tremayne	p. 162
Mrs. Snow	p. 165
The Pupil	p. 166
The Piano Teachers: A Memoir of the Thirties	p. 167
After-school Practice: A Short Story	p. 171
The Sunset Maker	p. 172
Notes	p. 175
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Excerpts

Poem to Be Read at 3 A.M.
(from "American Sketches")

Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 A.M.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking
This poemIs for whoever
Had the light on

Pantoum of the Great Depression

Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.

Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don't remember all the particulars.

We managed. No need for the heroic.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
I don't remember all the particulars.
Across the fence, the neighbors were our chorus.

There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
Thank god no one said anything in verse.
The neighbors were our only chorus,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.

At no time did anyone say anything in verse.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
No audience would ever know our story.

It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
What audience would ever know our story?
Beyond our windows shone the actual world.

We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
Somewhere beyond our windows shone the world.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
We did not ourselves know what the end was.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues.

But we did not ourselves know what the end was.
People like us simply go on.
We have our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues,
But it is by blind chance only that we escape tragedy.

And there is no plot in that; it is devoid of poetry.

Excerpted from New and Selected Poems by Donald Justice
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.