The Sorrows of Eros and Other Poems

by Weinfield, Henry

• ISBN13: 9780268017668
• ISBN10: 0268017662
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Notre Dame Pr

Summary

Drawn fifteen years of work, The Sorrows of Eros and Other Poems from resents a rich selection of the verse of Henry Weinfield. Many of the poems contained here appear for the first time. The sensuous lyricism of the English tradition and the classic austerity of philosophical discourse are brought together in this poetry in a way that is unique in our time. A master of rhyme and meter, Weinfield's sonnets, tercets, and rhyme royal fall upon the ear with rare grace. Brilliantly allusive in their frames of reference, they are woven from the stuff of Dante, Shakespeare, and Shelley; Plato, Genesis, and the Book of Job. Yet Weinfield is also given to the kind of rigorous intellectual speculation that one usually associates with poets such as William Bronk or George Oppen, and a refined process of abstraction never fails to give the work an utterly contemporary edge. His subject matter is equally challenging; here are poems about political violence, the anomie of the postmodern city, the bittersweet disasters of the erotic life. Powerfully chastening, these poems nevertheless can comfort, charm, and delight; they are "The luminous and liquid solacings/That language proffers us against the void".

Table of Contents

ONE --- SONNETS ELEGIAC AND SATIRICAL
Letters to you, imprisoned in my heart	13	(1)
The park was where we found ourselves alone	14	(1)
Plato's Republic was no place for us	15	(1)
Poets are liars, as the proverb runs	16	(1)
At best, the poet's statements are absurd	17	(1)
Heroic love, which yearns to be unique	18	(1)
The early Christians were so confident	19	(1)
An Irish boy was piping to a crowd	20	(1)
For years I called myself a communist	21	(1)
For years I sojourned in the Land of Prose	22	(1)
You say that in these sonnets we exist	23	(1)
Your tourist-agent called it Paradise	24	(1)
Though Occam's Razor, the logician's knife	25	(4)
TWO --- FABLES FROM THE DARK AGES
An Essay on Violence	29	(7)
Several Sonnets on the Subject of Sex
Sex was a synonym for suffering	33	(1)
Sex was the solace of the citizen	34	(1)
Sex was a serpent in the hissing glade	35	(1)
Reification and the Consciousness of the Poet	36	(2)
The Spirit of Utopia	38	(4)
On Syberberg's Version of Parsifal...	42	(1)
Song for the In-Itself and For-Itself	43	(3)
``That Sunburnt Pilgrim...''	46	(2)
Sonnet (Our lives run counter-clockwise to the law)	48	(1)
Fables from the Dark Ages	49	(8)
THREE --- BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
To My Student, Colette	57	(3)
Variations on the Forest of Arden	60	(2)
Beauty and the Beast	62	(8)
The Sorrows of Eros	70	(11)
Sonnet (Buried beneath the language, in the sea)	81