The Owner of the House

by Simpson, Louis Aston Marantz

• ISBN13: 9781929918393
• ISBN10: 1929918399
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-01
• Publisher: Boa Editions

Summary

Few poets have so artfully confronted American life as Louis Simpson. Persona speakers struggle with everyday issues against a backdrop of larger forces, the individual's maladjustment to a culture of materialism and brutal competition, the failure of marriage under the pressures of such a society, the failure of the American dream. Simpson wages a lover's quarrel with the world. "Louis Simpson has perfect pitch. His poems win us first by their drama, their ways of voicing our ways . . . of making do with our lives. Then his intelligence cajoles us to the brink of a cliff of solitude and we step over into the buoyant element of true poetry."-Seamus Heaney Educated at Munro College (West Indies) and at Columbia University, Louis Simpson has taught widely, most recently at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of seventeen books of poetry and ten works of prose. He has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poetry, the Hudson Review, the Guggenheim Foundation, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Table of Contents

The Long Afternoon	p. 19
Nero in Love	p. 20
A Letter from Brazil	p. 21
An Old Building on Hudson Street	p. 24
The Appointment	p. 26
An Orchid	p. 29
The Listeners	p. 31
The Willies	p. 33
Inspiration	p. 37
A Wandering Life	p. 39
The Blue Coast	p. 40
Lilies of the Field	p. 43
All Sorts of Things	p. 45
The Floor Lamp	p. 46
"He's asleep"	p. 47
In Country Houses	p. 49
Country Doctor	p. 51
The Fence	p. 52
At Journey's End	p. 53
Foursome	p. 55
Wash, Dry, and Fold	p. 56
Any Time Now	p. 57
Sanctuary Road	p. 59
Kaimana Beach	p. 61
Peter's Dream	p. 65
A Walk with Goethe	p. 67
A Walk with Basho	p. 68
Confessions of a Professor of English	p. 69
A Farewell to His Muse	p. 72
Footnotes to Fodor's Spain	p. 74
Homeless Men	p. 78
In the Alpha Cradle	p. 80
Reading the Times	p. 82
The Wow! Factor	p. 83
Driving	p. 84
A Shearling Coat	p. 85
Graduation	p. 86
Variations on a Theme by Shostakovich	p. 87
At the Church Door	p. 91
The Children's Choir	p. 92
Grand Forks	p. 93
The Owner of the House	p. 95
Arm in Arm	p. 99
Lazarus Convalescent	p. 100
Summer Storm	p. 101
A Witty War	p. 102
Carentan O Carentan	p. 103
Song: "Rough Winds Do Shake the Darling Buds of May"	p. 105
As Birds Are Fitted to the Boughs	p. 109
A Woman Too Well Remembered	p. 110
The Man Who Married Magdalene	p. 111
Memories of a Lost War	p. 112
The Heroes	p. 113
The Battle	p. 114
The Ash and the Oak	p. 115
West	p. 116
Early in the Morning	p. 117
I Dreamed that in a City Dark as Paris	p. 121
A Dream of Governors	p. 122
To the Western World	p. 124
Hot Night on Water Street	p. 125
The Boarder	p. 126
Orpheus in America	p. 127
Music in Venice	p. 129
Cote d'Azur	p. 131
The Runner	p. 133
The Bird	p. 162
The Silent Generation	p. 167
The Lover's Ghost	p. 168
The Goodnight	p. 169
In California	p. 173
In the Suburbs	p. 174
The Redwoods	p. 175
There Is	p. 176
Summer Morning	p. 178
Birch	p. 179
The Morning Light	p. 180
The Cradle Trap	p. 181
A Story About Chicken Soup	p. 182
The Troika	p. 184
Frogs	p. 186
My Father in the Night Commanding No	p. 187
American Poetry	p. 189
The Inner Part	p. 190
On the Lawn at the Villa	p. 191
The Riders Held Back	p. 192
Wind, Clouds, and the Delicate Curve of the World	p. 194
Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain	p. 195
Stumpfoot on 42nd Street	p. 199
After Midnight	p. 201
Dvonya	p. 205
A Son of the Romanovs	p. 206
Meyer	p. 208
The Country House	p. 210
A Night in Odessa	p. 212
Isidor	p. 214
Indian Country	p. 215
The Climate of Paradise	p. 218
American Dreams	p. 219
The Photographer	p. 220
Vandergast and the Girl	p. 221
On a Disappearance of the Moon	p. 224
Port Jefferson	p. 225
A Friend of the Family	p. 226
The Foggy Lane	p. 231
Sacred Objects	p. 232
Trasimeno	p. 234
The Peat-Bog Man	p. 235
The Silent Piano	p. 236
Venus in the Tropics	p. 239
Dinner at the Sea-View Inn	p. 242
The Springs at Gadara	p. 245
The Hour of Feeling	p. 249
The Mannequins	p. 251
The Middleaged Man	p. 252
Baruch	p. 254
Searching for the Ox	p. 257
The Street	p. 263
Big Dream, Little Dream	p. 264
Before the Poetry Reading	p. 265
Working Late	p. 271
Sway	p. 273
American Classic	p. 277
The Beaded Pear	p. 278
The Ice Cube Maker	p. 282
The Old Graveyard at Hauppauge	p. 283
Why Do You Write About Russia?	p. 284
Typhus	p. 288
The Art of Storytelling	p. 290
The Pawnshop	p. 291
Caviar at the Funeral	p. 292
Chocolates	p. 293
Armidale	p. 295
Out of Season	p. 297
The Mexican Woman	p. 301
Back in the States	p. 302
Physical Universe	p. 305
How to Live on Long Island	p. 308
Quiet Desperation	p. 310
The Previous Tenant	p. 314
The Eleventh Commandment	p. 330
Periodontics	p. 332
Ed	p. 337
Akhmatova's Husband	p. 338
Reflections in a Spa	p. 339
In a Time of Peace	p. 340
The Unwritten Poem	p. 342
Riverside Drive	p. 345
Numbers and Dust	p. 346
Another Boring Story	p. 348
The People Next Door	p. 350
White Oxen	p. 353
Waiting in the Service Station	p. 354
A Bramble Bush	p. 355
Sea of Grass	p. 357
The Choir Master's Evening Party	p. 361
Suddenly	p. 362
Al and Beth	p. 364
There You Are	p. 366
Viet-Cong	p. 368
Remembering the Sixties	p. 369
The Believer	p. 370
The Dental Assistant	p. 372
The Walker on Main Street	p. 373
Stairs	p. 375
Working Out	p. 376
The Indian Student	p. 377
Old Field Stories	p. 379
August	p. 380
Her Weekend in the Country	p. 383
Patsy	p. 384
Honeymoon	p. 385
An Academic Story	p. 387
After a Light Snowfall	p. 393
Shoo-Fly Pie	p. 394
Like a Glass of Tea	p. 395
A Clearing	p. 396
Index of Titles	p. 401
Acknowledgments	p. 404
About the Author	p. 405
Colophon	p. 408
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