At the Palace of Jove : Poems

by Kirchwey, Karl

• ISBN13: 9780399149191
• ISBN10: 0399149198
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-10-28
• Publisher: A Marian Wood Book/Putnam

Summary

"Our favorite 'unsung' poet," were the words Chapters Bookstore used when including Karl Kirchwey's The Engrafted Wordamong their 1998 favorite books. Now, in this new volume, Kirchwey -whose work has garnered high praise from such poets as Richard Wilbur, John Hollander, and James Merrill and who has been the recipient of prestigious prizes and fellowships-continues his explorations into the impact of the past on the present. But he also adds a strong dimension of moral gravity and social satire along with a deeper-and deeply moving-element of the personal. At the Palace of Jovedisplays Kirchwey's great gifts, offering poems of uncommon wit, piercing intelligence, visionary clarity, and generous emotional power.

Author Biography

Karl Kirchwey, whose work appears in such publications as Grand Street, The Paris Review, and Parnassus and has been anthologized widely, is the author of three acclaimed collections. Formerly Director of the Unterberg Poetry Center, he is now Director of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xiii
Satires
Virtue at the Palace of Jove	3	(1)
Midas	4	(1)
The Poet	5	(1)
Posillipo	6	(2)
Palazzo Altemps	8	(1)
Bees	9	(1)
In His Vatican Apartments, the Holy Father Learns That Rome Has Won the Final	10	(2)
Garden State	12	(1)
I-91	13	(1)
Oracular Degeneration	14	(1)
Mystic Toggle	15	(2)
The Snow-Storm	17	(4)
Anatomies
Lit	21	(1)
Cabane des Violettes	22	(1)
Philadelphia Zoo	23	(2)
During the Balkans War	25	(1)
The Brazen Hand	26	(2)
My Grandmother's Suitcase	28	(1)
The Moons of Jupiter	29	(2)
Nativity and Eclipse	31	(1)
The Quincunx	32	(2)
Dialogue (Giacometti, Hands Holding the Void, 1934)	34	(5)
Elegies
Untitled	39	(1)
Roman Park, Noon	40	(2)
Methymna	42	(2)
Creusa	44	(2)
``The Tragic Sense of Life''	46	(1)
Jump	47	(1)
Cointrin, 1972	48	(1)
December 31, 1999	49	(1)
Deer Isle	50	(1)
Lullaby	51	(1)
Late Beauty	52	(5)
Imitations
Forsaking	57	(1)
Suckling	58	(2)
In the Garden (Goethe, Roman Elegies XXIV)	60	(2)
Chardin, The Morning Toilet (1741)	62	(1)
A Baroque Stair-Fountain in the Orto Botanico	63	(3)
Coulter Brook	66	(3)
Three for Music
Monteverdi	69	(1)
Bach	70	(1)
K. 453	71	(1)
Variations on a Postcard	72	(1)
T. S. Eliot
In the House of the Soul (Cavafy)	73	(2)
Notes	75