The Plural of Happiness

by Deconinck, Herman; Bosselaar, Laure-Anne; Brown, Kurt; Simic, Charles

• ISBN13: 9780932440303
• ISBN10: 0932440304
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-01
• Publisher: Oberlin College Pr

Summary

Herman de Coninck, Belgium's leading poet for many decades, appears in English in a single volume for the first time. Witty, tender, trenchant, wise, de Coninck's poems range from playful, terse love lyrics to darkly ironic, somberly truthful observations about human experience. Bosselaar and Brown, both fine poets in their own right, are skillful translators. .

Table of Contents

"I come from far away"	p. 3
"The way you came in and said hello"	p. 4
"What a lack of pathos"	p. 5
"Will I be unable to shut up"	p. 6
"When the sun shouts golden orders"	p. 7
"And she hugged him with all her sins"	p. 8
"Fat-assed. Settling into the power"	p. 9
"Smack in the heart of July"	p. 10
Sailor's song	p. 11
"What a great idea of her parents"	p. 12
"Your sweaters"	p. 13
"Half the time during the day, I slept"	p. 14
After an argument	p. 17
Poetry	p. 18
Elephant	p. 19
The rhinoceros	p. 20
Triangle	p. 21
Study in color	p. 22
Birthday poem	p. 23
Defuser of mines	p. 27
For each other	p. 28
Herault	p. 29
Time out	p. 30
Two kinds of nothing	p. 31
She and he	p. 32
Mother	p. 33
Genesis	p. 37
"He had hoped it could be done without autumn"	p. 38
"If only he could, just like that, leave her"	p. 39
In the seaport of Oostduinkerke	p. 40
Glass shards in the sun	p. 41
"For six years she learned what lasting was"	p. 53
"'Yes, sleep,' I say"	p. 54
"She has all she needs for kissing"	p. 55
On a picture by Dre Peeters	p. 56
"Just as this island belongs to the gulls"	p. 57
"Once, a fist hit the table"	p. 58
Juniper tree, Canyonlands	p. 59
Here	p. 60
Yonder	p. 61
1958	p. 65
Ann	p. 67
Poetry	p. 69
Snowmass village	p. 70
Paris, May 1st	p. 71
Gendray	p. 72
"Hop, in the curtains, hop on the tabletop"	p. 73
"Profession : inspector general of rhododendrons"	p. 74
Around and about	p. 75
"What will you do today?"	p. 76
Epithalamium	p. 77
Fingerprints on a window	p. 81
Evening, mid-May	p. 82
Pointillism	p. 83
November	p. 84
"Slow snowing. As if it snowed upwards"	p. 85
Last post	p. 86
"If all rivers were made of ink"	p. 87
May evening, Gendray	p. 88
Ars poetica	p. 89
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