The Wild Card

by Shapiro, Karl Jay; Kunitz, Stanley; Ignatow, David; Ignatow, David

• ISBN13: 9780252023897
• ISBN10: 0252023897
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

Karl Shapiro, who won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1945, is an American poetic treasure and an acknowledged master of lyrical poetry whose subjects have ranged from commonplace objects and occurrences to biting political commentary to open celebrations of the contradictions in humanity's moral nature. As his subjects have evolved, so has his style, developing and modulating into various forms, but always with an essential lyricism. To read Shapiro's work as it unfolds in The Wild Card will be to grasp the depth and breadth of a great poet's career and the many sides of his nature.

Author Biography

Karl Shapiro, one of the twentieth century's major poets, has published more than twenty books, including poetry, essays, and fiction. He has been Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, the position now known as U.S. Poet Laureate, and a winner in 1969 of the Bollingen Prize. Shapiro is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Formerly a faculty member of several major universities, he is now retired and lives in Manhattan. Stanley Kunitz and the late David Ignatow are two of the most celebrated poets of the latter part of the century. The late M. L. Rosenthal was a distinguished poet and critic who for many years was poetry editor of The Nation.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xv	(4)
Stanley Kunitz
Introduction	xix
M.L. Rosenthal
From Person, Place, and Thing (1942)	3	(44)
The Dome of Sunday	3	(2)
Washington Cathedral	5	(2)
Auto Wreck	7	(2)
Hospital	9	(2)
The Fly	11	(2)
University	13	(2)
Drug Store	15	(1)
Haircut	16	(1)
Waitress	17	(1)
Buick	18	(1)
Israfel	19	(1)
Mongolian Idiot	20	(1)
Necropolis	21	(1)
October 1	22	(2)
Epitaph for John and Richard	24	(1)
Emporium	25	(1)
Death of Emma Goldman	26	(1)
The Contraband	27	(1)
Elegy for Two Banjos	28	(2)
Scyros	30	(2)
The Glutton	32	(1)
Poet	33	(3)
Travelogue for Exiles	36	(1)
Midnight Show	37	(2)
Conscription Camp	39	(3)
The Twins	42	(1)
Nostalgia	43	(1)
A Cut Flower	44	(3)
From V-Letter and Other Poems (1944)	47	(34)
Troop Train	47	(2)
Christmas Eve: Australia	49	(1)
Piano	50	(1)
Magician	51	(2)
Red Indian	53	(1)
Full Moon: New Guinea	54	(1)
The Gun	55	(1)
The Second-Best Bed	56	(2)
Fireworks	58	(1)
Lord, I Have Seen Too Much	59	(1)
Franklin	60	(1)
Jefferson	61	(1)
Sunday: New Guinea	62	(1)
Jew	63	(1)
Shylock	64	(1)
The Synagogue	65	(2)
The Interlude	67	(2)
The Intellectual	69	(2)
V-Letter	71	(2)
Elegy for a Dead Soldier	73	(8)
From Trial of a Poet (1947)	81	(22)
Homecoming	81	(2)
The Conscientious Objector	83	(1)
The Progress of Faust	84	(2)
In the Waxworks	86	(2)
D.C.	88	(2)
The Convert	90	(2)
Boy-Man	92	(2)
The Southerner	94	(2)
Recapitulations	96	(7)
From Poems 1940-1953 (1953)	103	(12)
Israel	103	(1)
The Minute	104	(2)
The Figurehead	106	(2)
The Potomac	108	(1)
Going to School	109	(6)
From Poems of a Jew (1958)	115	(10)
The Alphabet	115	(1)
Messias	116	(1)
The Confirmation	117	(2)
The First Time	119	(1)
The Murder of Moses	120	(5)
From The Bourgeois Poet (1964)	125	(34)
Solipsism	125	(1)
The Bourgeois Poet	126	(1)
The Living Rooms of My Neighbors	127	(1)
The Wood	128	(1)
The Clearing	129	(1)
Hair	130	(1)
Beautiful Thing	131	(1)
Office Love	132	(1)
High School	133	(1)
The Child Who Is Silent	134	(1)
Generations	135	(1)
I Am an Atheist Who Says His Prayers	136	(2)
My Century	138	(1)
Amsterdam Whores	139	(1)
Jazz	140	(1)
Nebraska	141	(1)
The Cracking-Plant	142	(1)
Burlesk	143	(1)
Bouquet	144	(1)
Fox Hole	145	(1)
The Nature of Belief	146	(1)
French Poetry	147	(1)
Baudelaire in Iowa	148	(1)
Randall Jarrell	149	(1)
Clowing	150	(1)
Roethke	151	(1)
Poets' Corner	152	(1)
Glad Hand	153	(1)
Fame	154	(1)
The Funeral of Poetry	155	(4)
From Selected Poems (1968)	159	(12)
Manhole Covers	159	(1)
Calling the Child	160	(1)
Lines for a Unitarian Church	161	(1)
Bad Taste, Inc.	162	(1)
Human Nature	163	(1)
You Call These Poems?	164	(1)
Emily Dickinson and Katherine Anne Porter	165	(1)
California Winter	166	(5)
A Selection of Poems (1969-92)	171	(22)
There Was That Roman Poet	171	(1)
W.H.A.	172	(1)
The Old Poet	173	(1)
Mozart's Jew	174	(1)
The Humanities Building	175	(2)
Crossing Lincoln Park	177	(1)
My Father's Funeral	178	(2)
Moving In	180	(2)
A Curiosity	182	(1)
The Piano Tuner's Wife	183	(1)
At Auden's Grave	184	(3)
The Old Horsefly	187	(1)
Tennyson	188	(1)
Whitman	189	(1)
Future-Perfect	190	(1)
July 7, 1978	191	(2)
Acknowledgments	193