Summary

From the award-winning author ofThe Bird Catcher, this life-spanning volume offers the delight of both discovery and re-discovery, as Ponsot tends the unruly garden of her mind with her customary care and passion. The book opens with a group of new poems, including "What Would You Like to Be When You Grow Up?"a question that has kept Ponsot's work vital for more than five decades. Throughout the selections from her four earlier books and a trove of previously unpublished work covering the years 1946 to 1971, she offers us a "lost haven in a springing world." Sometimes sharp in her self-perception, but always listing toward pleasure and elegance, unafraid of grief and the passage of time, Ponsot continually refreshes her language and the spirited self from which it emerges. From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

Marie Ponsot’s first book of poems was True Minds (1956); later books are Admit Impediment (1981) and The Green Dark (1988). She is a native New Yorker who has enjoyed teaching at Queens College, Beijing United University, the Poetry Center of the YMHA, New York University, and Columbia University. Among her awards are an NEA Creative Writing grant, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association. Ponsot’s most recent collection, The Bird Catcher, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 1998. From the Hardcover edition.

Old Jokes Appreciate	p. 3
Drunk and Disorderly, Big Hair	p. 4
Origin	p. 6
What Would You Like to Be When You Grow Up?	p. 8
Now Then	p. 11
Decorum, Reflection	p. 12
Ghosts of Narrative	p. 13
Metaphysics	p. 16
Quick It Can	p. 18
Rods and Cones, and The Statute of Limitations	p. 20
What Changes	p. 22
End of October	p. 25
Entranced	p. 27
Real Estate: Kripplebush, New York	p. 29
Crude Cabin, At the Brink of Quiet	p. 30
Out of Water	p. 32
Pathetic Fallacies Are Bad Science But	p. 33
Antepenultimate	p. 35
At the Botanical Gardens, University of British Columbia	p. 36
After-Image, Cortes Island	p. 37
My Word Is My Bond	p. 39
We Stand Our Ground	p. 40
Strong, Off Route 209	p. 41
Imagine That	p. 42
The First, At the Last	p. 44
Rain All Night, Paris	p. 46
A Visit	p. 49
Sensibility	p. 50
St.-Germain-des-Pres: Summer 1948	p. 51
Ritournelle, for Paris 1948	p. 52
Private and Profane	p. 54
Anniversary	p. 56
Pleasant Avenue	p. 57
"Ville Indigene": Afrique du Nord	p. 60
Sam Refuted, Respectfully	p. 63
Take Any Card	p. 65
Under a Routine Procedure	p. 67
Elegy for Elizabeth Bleecker Averell	p. 68
Gigue for Christmas Eve	p. 69
To Forbid Grief	p. 70
Because We Certainly Have Nothing Better to Do	p. 71
Survival	p. 72
Springing	p. 73
Dialogue of Nemo and Personne	p. 74
Explication de Texte	p. 76
The Crow Dressed in Peacock Feathers	p. 78
A Tale Told by Atheneus (Venus Callipygus)	p. 79
Symposium Holiday	p. 80
Last Resort	p. 81
"Luxuria," Dreamboat	p. 82
Half Full	p. 83
Out of the North: Two Views	p. 84
Take My Disproportionate Desire	p. 89
"Qu'ai-je a Faire en Paradis?"	p. 90
Matins and Lauds	p. 91
Possession	p. 92
Multipara Gravida 5	p. 93
Communion of Saints: The Poor Bastard Under the Bridge	p. 94
"'What Are You Doing Here, Stephen?'"	p. 95
Rockefeller the Center	p. 96
For a Divorce	p. 99
Basic Skills	p. 103
Residual Paralysis	p. 104
About My Birthday	p. 106
Bilingual	p. 107
Among Women	p. 109
From the Fountain at Vaucluse	p. 110
Ghost Writer	p. 114
The Differance: Chatou-Croissy	p. 117
Live Model	p. 119
Half-Life: Copies to All Concerned	p. 121
Unabashed	p. 123
As Is	p. 124
Late	p. 125
Of Certain Students	p. 129
For a Season	p. 130
Lullaby	p. 131
A Third Thank-You Letter	p. 132
Discovery	p. 135
Advice: Ad Haereditates (I)	p. 137
Gliding	p. 141
The Great Dead, Why Not, May Know	p. 145
On a Library of Congress Photo of Eunice B. Winkless, 1904	p. 151
The Problem of Freedom and Commitment	p. 153
The Problem of Fiction	p. 154
The Problem of Gratified Desire	p. 156
The Problem of Loving-kindness	p. 157
Wearing the Gaze of an Archaic Statue	p. 158
"Love Is Not Love"	p. 160
Hangzhou, Lake of the Poets	p. 164
Levels	p. 166
The Royal Gate	p. 168
Outside the Fertile Crescent	p. 169
Synthesis	p. 170
De-fusing the Usual Criminal Metaphors	p. 171
Jamaica Wildlife Center, Queens, New York	p. 173
The Ides of May	p. 175
Between	p. 176
Hard-Shell Clams	p. 177
Out of Eden	p. 178
Patient	p. 179
Museum out of Mind	p. 180
Call	p. 183
Friday Market	p. 184
Myopia Makes All Light Sources Radiant	p. 185
In Abeyance	p. 187
Analemmatic	p. 189
Take Time, Take Place	p. 190
"I've Been Around: It Gets Me Nowhere"	p. 199
Old Mama Saturday	p. 201
Northampton Style	p. 203
The Title's Last	p. 204
One Is One	p. 205
Pourriture Noble	p. 206
For My Old Self, At Notre-Dame	p. 208
The Border	p. 210
Separate, In the Swim	p. 212
The Story After the Story	p. 214
Roundstone Cove	p. 216
Reading a Large Serving Dish	p. 217
Analysis	p. 219
Two Questions	p. 220
Pre-Text	p. 222
Explores Cry Out Unheard	p. 224
Winter	p. 225
Oceans	p. 226
Even	p. 227
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

Springing

In a skiff on a sunrisen lake we are watchers.

Swimming aimlessly is luxury, just as walking
Loudly up a shallow stream is.

As we lean over the deep well, we whisper.

Friends at hearths are drawn to the one warm air;
stranger meet on beaches drawn to the one wet sea.

What wd it be to be water, one body of water
(what water is is another mystery). (We are
water divided.) It wd be a self without walls,
with surface tension, specific gravity, a local
exchange between bedrock and cloud of falling and rising,
rising to fall, falling to rise.

Old Jokes Appreciate

Up the long stairs I run
stumbling, expectant.
Impatience is hopelessly
desperate. Hope
takes time.

Sort out the private from the personal.
Advance on losses at a decent pace.

"Aside from all that, Mrs. Lincoln,
how did you like the play?"

Origin

The skull or shell
or wall of bone shaped
with its egg advantages
does not advertise

the gardens it contains,
the marriages, the furies,
or the city it shelters
(clangs, clouds, silences,
found souls crowding,
big dank cans where things
putrify)

or the glade it hides
for us to hide in, where
—our lives eased open—
we drowse by the pond and wake
beside ourselves with thirst,
where (dipping the cup we find)
we get of necessity
a drink of some depth
full of taste
and original
energy.

The darling face,
the fragrant chevelure,
even the beautiful ears
on the shell do not
boast about the workplace inside.

They prefer to appear to agree
they are just along for the ride.

From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpted from Springing: New and Selected Poems by Marie Ponsot
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.