Works and Days

by Mayes, Edward Kleinschmidt

• ISBN13: 9780822957089
• ISBN10: 0822957086
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

Summary

Edward Kleinschmidt Mayes carouses -- playfully, deliciously -- through the Italian countryside with his latest collection of poems. Like Hesiod's Works and Days, Mayes's collection explores the art of living and the transformations of one's life while working the land as a farmer. In his hand, the ecstatic and elegiac meet, often shifting between a wide-angle lens to the immediacy of the kitchen table, from Newton's revelations to the death of his parents.

This book is written as an abecedarius: each poem's Italian title begins with a different letter of the alphabet, from Ago (needle) to Zappa (hoe). Often beginning a poem on the word that ended the last, Mayes strings his readers along on denotation and double meaning -- slight detours that take us from here to there, from Ovid shouting at his dog to our eternal quarrel with time. We follow this poet and his words, delighting in the movement, continually transported by sudden evocations of emotion that hit close to the heart. Mayes, known for his complex play with linguistic roots and for hard-driving tens

Table of Contents

Ago	1	(3)
Buii	4	(2)
Campo	6	(2)
Dove	8	(3)
Erbaccia	11	(3)
Fabbro	14	(2)
Giorni	16	(3)
Io	19	(3)
Lavoro	22	(2)
Macchina	24	(3)
Notizia	27	(4)
Oliveto	31	(3)
Porca Miseria	34	(3)
Qua	37	(3)
Raccolta	40	(3)
Sfuso	43	(3)
Terreno	46	(3)
Uva	49	(3)
Verita	52	(4)
Zappa	56	(5)
Acknowledgments	61