In Beauty Bright
Poems
22 August 2012
Description
“Gerald Stern is the most expansively celebratory poet in years. He is akin to a natural force.”—Georgia Review
The lyric poems of In Beauty Bright, although marked by the same passion and swiftness as Gerald Stern’s previous work, move into an area of knowledge—even wisdom—that reflects a long life of writing, teaching, and activism. They are poems of grief and anger, but the music is delicate and moving.
from “In Beauty Bright”
In beauty-bright and such it was like Blake’s
lily and though an angel he looked absurd
dragging a lily out of a beauty-bright store
wrapped in tissue with a petal drooping,
nor was it useless—you who know it know
how useful it is—and how he would be dead
in a minute if he were to lose it though
how do you lose a lily?
from “In Beauty Bright”
In beauty-bright and such it was like Blake’s
lily and though an angel he looked absurd
dragging a lily out of a beauty-bright store
wrapped in tissue with a petal drooping,
nor was it useless—you who know it know
how useful it is—and how he would be dead
in a minute if he were to lose it though
how do you lose a lily?
Reviews
"[Stern’s] style insinuates itself into your consciousness like a catchy tune, so that you find your thoughts echoing its rhythms, bopping from one to another, back and forth, like thought and language doing a jitterbug." — Frank Wilson, Philadelphia Inquirer
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