CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION by Helen Vendler

OMMATEUM WITH DOXOLOGY (1955)

So I Said I Am Ezra

The Sap Is Gone Out of the Trees

In Strasbourg in 1349

I Broke a Sheaf of Light

Some Months Ago

I Went Out to the Sun

At Dawn in 1098

The Whaleboat Struck

Turning a Moment to Say So Long

Dying in a Mirthful Place

When Rahman Rides

With Ropes of Hemp

My Dice Are Crystal

Having Been Interstellar

Coming to Sumer

I Assume the World Is Curious About Me

I Struck a Diminished Seventh

Gilgamesh Was Very Lascivious

When I Set Fire to the Reed Patch

The Grass Miracles

I Came in a Dark Woods Upon

A Treeful of Cleavage Flared Branching

In the Wind My Rescue Is

[I should have stayed longer idle]

A Crippled Angel

Dropping Eyelids Among the Aerial Ash

I Came Upon a Plateau

EXPRESSIONS OF SEA LEVEL (1964)

Hymn (“I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth . . .”)

Risks and Possibilities

Expressions of Sea Level

Hardweed Path Going

Motion for Motion

What This Mode of Motion Said

The Golden Mean

CORSONS INLET (1965)

Four Motions for the Pea Vines

Hymn II (“So when the year had come full round . . .”)

Hymn III (“In the hour of extreme // importance . . .”)

Whose Timeless Reach

Ritual for Eating the World

Driving Through

TAPE FOR THE TURN OF THE YEAR (1965)

6 Dec: (“today I / decided to write / a long / thin / poem . . .”)

7 Dec: (“today / I feel a bit different . . .”)

8 Dec: (“the way I could tell / today / that yesterday is dead . . .”)

9 Dec: (“sunny again: // last night a plane . . .”)

10 Dec: (“sunshine & shade / alternate at 32 . . .”)

11 Dec: (“they changed the forecast / today . . .”)

12 Dec: (“clouds came in soon after / dark last night . . .”)

13 Dec: (“my book came today, Friday / the 13th . . .”)

14 Dec: (“today / came in an / opposite way / of rain turning into snow . . .”)

15 Dec: (“my poem went for a ride / today . . .”)

16 Dec: (“first I heard / on the radio this morning / it was / 19 degrees . . .”)

17 Dec: (“Sisyphus / struggling / with his / immortal / rock . . .”)

18 Dec: (“today / broke as if under water . . .”)

19 Dec: (“this ole world could be / one . . .”)

20 Dec: (“today is cold: hit / ten last night: / and it not winter / yet . . .”)

21 Dec: (“the jay was out / before sunrise / wheeling & dealing . . .”)

22 Dec: (“we lost our mule Kate in / the fall / to a chattel mortgage . . .”)

23 Dec: (“I was thinking when I woke / up . . .”)

26 Dec: (“today is bright, warm . . .”)

27 Dec: (“today is / cloudy / in several ways . . .”)

28 Dec: (“today / is dim / again . . .”)

30 Dec: (“today is 19 & / sunny . . .”)

31 Dec: (“today the dry burn in / my nose of a cold / coming on . . .”)

1 Jan: (“raining: / at the borderline & / promise / of snow . . .”)

2 Jan: (“today / feels above freezing & is / sunshiny . . .”)

3 Jan: (“today is warm & sunny: / may go up to 50 . . .”)

4 Jan: (“3:20 pm: today is near- / ly shot aready . . .”)

5 Jan: (“today is sunny & it may / be warm again . . .”)

6 Jan: (“today is splennid again . . .”)

7 Jan: (“today is rainy . . .”)

8 Jan: (“today is sunny & warming . . .”)

9 Jan: (“today ben / der clouds . . .”)

10 Jan: (“today is windy as March / & sunny . . .”)

NORTHFIELD POEMS (1966)

Landscape with Figures

The Foot-Washing

Sitting Down, Looking Up

First Carolina Said-Song

Second Carolina Said-Song

A Symmetry of Thought

The Wind Coming Down From

Conserving the Magnitude of Uselessness

If Anything Will Level with You Water Will

The Unifying Principle

Life in the Boondocks

Guitar Recitativos

Apologia pro Vita Sua

Love Song (“Like the hills under dusk . . .”)

Love Song (2) (“Rings of birch bark . . .”)

Possibility Along a Line of Difference

Cascadilla Falls

BRIEFINGS: POEMS SMALL AND EASY (1971)

After Yesterday

Peracute Lucidity

Two Possibilities

Medicine for Tight Spots

Brooks & Other Notions

This Black Rich Country

This Bright Day

Look for My White Self

September Drift

He Held Radical Light

Hymn IV (“I hold you responsible . . .”)

Working with Tools

Doubling the Nerve

Dominion (“I said / Mr. Schafer . . .”)

Looking Over the Acreage

Elegy for a Jet Pilot

The Quince Bush

Early Morning in Early April

Concerning the Exclusions of the Object

The Run-Through

The Put-Down Come On

The City Limits

PREVIOUSLY UNCOLLECTED POEMS FROM COLLECTED POEMS 1951–1971 (1972)

The Pieces of My Voice

Chaos Staggered Up the Hill

Hymn V (“Assure us you side with order . . .”)

Trouble Making Trouble

The Imagined Land

The King of Ice

Village, Town, City—Highway, Road, Path

Lonely Splendor

The Swan Ritual

Essay on Poetics

Triphammer Bridge

Lollapalooza: 22 February

Satyr Formalist

Extremes and Moderations

Clearing the Dark Symbiosis

Lonesome Valley

Delaware Water Gap

The Eternal City

The Shoreless Tide

Grace Abounding

The Arc Inside and Out

SPHERE: THE FORM OF A MOTION (1974)

For Harold Bloom

Sphere: The Form of a Motion

DIVERSIFICATIONS (1975)

Double Exposure

Meeting the Opposition

The Stemless Flower

Self-Projection

Outside-the-Household Hint

Fundamental Constant

Three Travelogues

Course Discourse

Having to Do with Birth

The Unmirroring Peak

Pray Without Ceasing

THE SNOW POEMS (1977)

Words of Comfort

One Must Recall as One Mourns the Dead

Things Change, the Shit Shifts

Here I Sit, Fifty in the

My Father Used to Bring Banana

Have You Seen the Severe Waters

Ivy, a Winding)

The Hieroglyphic Gathered, the Books

Your Full-Service Mover, Madam

There! the Light of Human Reason!

8:45 A.M.—Doorbell Rings: Wife

Shall Will Be Used Properly or Will Shall

No Tirement Like Retirement

Light Falls Shadow and Beam through the Limbo

Mist Curtains Lower and Dissolve

The Snow Is Fine-Sightless Today the Ground

The Hen Pheasants Streak Out of the

If You Were Standing under the Elm and

Forecast for Today (Winter’s Firstday)

I Come in from the Snowy World

Poetry Is the Smallest

Christmas Eve Morning

Analysis Mines and Leaves to Heal

Snowed Last Night a Lot but Warmed Up

Those in Ledge Fright Seek

But If the Way Will

The Sun Climbs Daily Higher

A Seventeen Morning &

The First Morning in a Few

Quilted Spreads

Dung Ball, Round Graveyard

I See Downhill a Patch

The Stomach Is Quite

My Neighbor Shakes Feed along

Nature As Waterfalls

The Wind Picks Up Slick

Cold Didn’t Keep the Stuff

When I Think of “the Poet

You Can’t Get It Right

The Perfect Journey Is

[here a month of snow]

The Prescriptive Stalls As

After the Dissolve

A Sift, Sprinkling, or Veil

Structureless Rage, Perhaps

Tell What Will Not Tell Direct

Dark Day, Warm and Windy

A 41 Morning, Still Cloudy

Produce and Fuctifry

I Look Up Guff and Find the First

One at One with His Desire

The Temperature Rose 15 Degrees over

As for Fame I’ve Had It

When One Is a Child One Lives

Cloud Strays Rounded Up

It’s Half an Hour Later Before

This Poem Concerns

The Word Cries Out

I Woke Up at 6 and It Was

A Flock of My Days

You Can’t Imitate

Spring’s Old Hat Is Older

The Temperature Fell

It’s a Wonder the Body

Today Was Like Vomiting

I’m Unwilling

The Sky Clabbered Up with

It Does Not Rain in

The Miltonic (Miltownic) Isn’t

My Father Used to Tell of an

Arm’s Length Renders One

Snow Showed a Full Range

It’s So Dry the Brook, Down

Today Will Beat Anything

Sight Can Go Quickly, Aerial, Where

These Days Most

The Cardinal, Slanted Watershed

One Desires the Cutting

I Wonder if Pagan Is

Rage Spells More of My Words Right

On This Day Noteworthily Warm

Some Nights I Go Out to Piss

My Structure Is, Like the

You Think of the Sun That It

It Snowed All Night Snow

Some Fluffy, Long-Swaggly Catkins

My Father, I Hollow for You

I Cannot Re-wind the Brook

Considering the Variety

Variable Cloudiness Windy

On Walks I Go a Long Way along

One Trains Hard for

Will Firinger Be Kissed: Will

If Walking through Birdy Trees

They Say It Snowed

HIGHGATE ROAD (1977)

For Louise and Tom Gossett

One Thing and Another

For Doyle Fosso

Imaginary Number

INDEX OF TITLES

INDEX OF FIRST LINES