Galaxy love : poems / Gerald Stern.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The poems in this new volume by the winner of the National Book Award span countries and centuries, reflecting on memory, aging, history, and mortality. "Hamlet Naked" traverses Manhattan in the 1960s from a Shakespeare play on 47th Street to the cellar of a Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village; "Thieves and Murderers" encompasses musings of the medieval French poet Fran?ois Villon and Dwight Eisenhower; "Orson" recounts a meeting of the poet and Orson Welles, exiled in Paris. Gerald Stern recalls old cars he used to drive--"the 1950 Buick / with the small steering wheel / and the cigar lighter in the back seat"--as well as intimate portraits of his daily life "and the mussel-pooled and the heron-priested shore" of Florida. These are wistful, generous, lively love poems and elegies that capture the passage of time, the joys of a sensual life, and remembrances of the past.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. 13)
• The Truth (p. 17)
• Galaxy Love (p. 18)
• Bio VII (p. 19)
• Bastards (p. 21)
• Grandfathers (p. 22)
• Bio VIII (p. 23)
• Hiphole (p. 24)
• Song of Deborah (p. 26)
• Canticle (p. 27)
• Miami (p. 28)
• Blue Jay (p. 29)
• Blue Particles (p. 30)
• Ghost (p. 31)
• Ich Bin Jude (p. 32)
• Today It's Easter (p. 33)
• The Hill (p. 34)
• Dead Lamb (p. 35)
• Space and Time (p. 37)
• Azaleas (p. 38)
• Cup Cake Store (p. 39)
• Perish the Day (p. 40)
• Poverty (p. 41)
• Bess, Zickel, Warhol, Arendt (p. 43)
• Bollingen Ezra Pound, 1949 (p. 45)
• Merwin (p. 46)
• No One (p. 47)
• Route 29 (p. 48)
• Midrash (p. 50)
• Two Boats (p. 51)
• Ravenous (p. 53)
• Silence (p. 55)
• Dark Blue Geese (p. 57)
• Ruby Red (p. 58)
• A Walk Back from the Restaurant (p. 59)
• Lips (p. 60)
• Main Bridge (p. 61)
• Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 1939 (p. 62)
• Ritsos (p. 63)
• Boheme (p. 64)
• Decades (p. 65)
• Those Who Loved Budapest (p. 66)
• Gold (p. 67)
• The One in Paris (p. 68)
• Ecstasy (p. 70)
• Book of the Dead (p. 71)
• The Year of Everything (p. 72)
• Billionaires (p. 74)
• Two Things (p. 76)
• Larry (p. 79)
• Les Fleurs (p. 81)
• Never Again (p. 83)
• Croissant Moon (p. 84)
• Hope Mountain (p. 85)
• To Comfort You (p. 86)
• Thieves and Murderers (p. 88)
• Talking Angels (p. 90)
• Mad Ireland Drove Him into Poetry (p. 91)
• Prince of the Second Heaven (p. 92)
• Dirty Music (p. 94)
• Sunset (p. 95)
• Coal Barons (p. 96)
• Orson (p. 98)
• Visit from Mars (p. 100)
• Gelato (p. 102)
• Ancient Chinese Egg (p. 104)
• Loneliness (p. 106)
• Hamlet Naked (p. 107)
• Believe It (p. 109)
• KGB, The Reading (p. 111)
• Goldfinches (p. 113)
• Marriage Song (p. 114)
• West Virginia (p. 115)
• Fall 1960 (p. 117)
• Mulberries (p. 118)
• Philadelphia, North of Huntingdon (p. 119)
• My Grave (p. 121)
• Skylark (p. 122)
• The Other (p. 123)
• One War (p. 124)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Prolific poet Stern, winner of such accolades as the National Book Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, and the Robert Frost Medal, among others, sticks to form in this latest. Stern's speakers-mostly his celebratory, verbose, digressive self, in the Whitmanian tradition-look backward, as the eponymous poem clearly articulates in its opening lines: "There's too little time left to measure/ the space between us for that was/ long ago." The framing devices remain mostly in the past tense, as in "Dead Lamb" ("For some reason there was no more sea") and "Silence" ("I once planned a room for pure silence"). Verdict Although this book quickly follows In Beauty Bright, which might leave readers wondering how fresh these poems feel, these ultimately thoughtful narrative recollections from and about the poet himself should do well in most general poetry collections. [See Prepub Alert, 10/24/16.]-Stephen Morrow, Hilliard, OH © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.