from Enormously Sad . . . Sad, so sad-compared to what? To your earlier more oblivious state? It never was oblivious enough- always those presentiments of sadness prickling the limbic. Now a voice says, Get outside yourself, go walk on the flats. The tide's gone out— but your little metal detector will detect little metallic coins of enormous sadness in the teeming wet sand, and then, the tide will come back, erasing, cleansing! And you, standing there in the salty scouring air- will you still be enormously sad, While the other world, outside your tiny purview, struck by iron, reels? World of intentional iron, pure savage organized iron of the world, it hasn't the time that you have for your puny enormous sadness. Widely acclaimed for expanding the stylistic boundaries of both the narrative and meditative lyric, Gail Mazur’s poetry crackles with verbal invention as she confronts the inevitable upheavals of a lived life. Zeppo’s First Wife, which includes excerpts from Mazur’s four previous books, as well as twenty-two new poems, is epitomized by the worldly longing of the title poem, with its searching poignancy and comic bravura. Mazur’s explorations of “this fallen world, this loony world” are deeply moving acts of empathy by a singular moral sensibility—evident from the earliest poem included here, the much-anthologized “Baseball,” a stunning bird’s-eye view of human foibles and passions. Clear-eyed, full of paradoxical griefs and appetites, her poems brave the most urgent subjects—from the fraught luscious Eden of the ballpark, to the fragility of our closest human ties, to the implications for America in a world where power and war are cataclysmic for the strong as well as the weak.
from Enormously Sad . . . Sad, so sad-compared to what? To your earlier more oblivious state? It never was oblivious enough- always those presentiments of sadness prickling the limbic. Now a voice says, Get outside yourself, go walk on the flats. The tide's gone out— but your little metal detector will detect little metallic coins of enormous sadness in the teeming wet sand, and then, the tide will come back, erasing, cleansing! And you, standing there in the salty scouring air- will you still be enormously sad, While the other world, outside your tiny purview, struck by iron, reels? World of intentional iron, pure savage organized iron of the world, it hasn't the time that you have for your puny enormous sadness. Widely acclaimed for expanding the stylistic boundaries of both the narrative and meditative lyric, Gail Mazur’s poetry crackles with verbal invention as she confronts the inevitable upheavals of a lived life. Zeppo’s First Wife, which includes excerpts from Mazur’s four previous books, as well as twenty-two new poems, is epitomized by the worldly longing of the title poem, with its searching poignancy and comic bravura. Mazur’s explorations of “this fallen world, this loony world” are deeply moving acts of empathy by a singular moral sensibility—evident from the earliest poem included here, the much-anthologized “Baseball,” a stunning bird’s-eye view of human foibles and passions. Clear-eyed, full of paradoxical griefs and appetites, her poems brave the most urgent subjects—from the fraught luscious Eden of the ballpark, to the fragility of our closest human ties, to the implications for America in a world where power and war are cataclysmic for the strong as well as the weak.

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motw/Zeppo's First Wife_ New and Sel - Gail Mazur.pdf

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Phoenix Poets : Zeppo's First Wife : New and Selected Poems

Mazur, Gail(Author)

University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005

United States, United States of America

Phoenix Poets, Chicago, 2010

1, 2010

lg_fict_id_2617444

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Contents 6
Acknowledgments 12
New Poems 14
Enormously Sad 16
Blue Umbrella 18
American Ghazal 20
Acadia 22
At First, They 24
Queenie 26
Dana Street, December 28
The Swamp Trail 31
Now: 33
The Mission 35
Cape Air 37
Cemetery Road 39
Night Visitation 41
September 43
Black Ducks 44
A Small Door 46
To Whoever May Be Concerned: 48
Rudy’s Tree 50
To X 52
Seven Sons 53
Waterlilies 56
Zeppo’s First Wife 58
Five Poems Entitled “Questions” 66
Maybe It’s Only the Monotony 76
Not Crying 77
Evening 79
I Wish I Want I Need 81
Young Apple Tree, December 85
The Weskit 87
Penumbra 92
Last Night 95
My Dream after Mother Breaks Her Hip 98
They Can’t Take That Away from Me 100
Hypnosis 104
At the Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic 106
Girl in a Library 113
Twenty Lines before Breakfast 116
Wakeful before Tests 117
Shangri-la 120
Two Bedrooms 122
Poems 128
Michelangelo: To Giovanni da Pistoia When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel 129
Air Drawing 134
Leah’s Dream 136
Then 138
Right Now 139
Keep Going 140
The Beach 144
Low Tide 146
To Begin This Way Every Day 148
Three Provincetown Mornings 150
Insomnia at Daybreak 153
Two Worlds: A Bridge 156
The Acorn 160
I’m a Stranger Here Myself 161
Mensch in the Morning 163
In Houston 165
Whatever They Want 168
Desire 170
Bedroom at Arles 172
Poem for Christian, My Student 174
May, Home after a Year Away 176
Bluebonnets 180
Fracture Santa Monica 182
The Idea of Florida during a Winter Thaw 184
Snake in the Grass 186
Blue 188
Why You Travel 190
After the Storm, August 192
A Green Watering Can 196
Maternal 198
Ware’s Cove 200
Ice 202
Traces 204
Phonic 206
Pennies from Heaven 208
Another Tree 210
Revenant 212
Yahrzeit 213
Family Plot 215
Foliage 220
The Common 221
At Boston Garden, the First Night of War, 1991 223
Poem Ending with Three Lines of Wordsworth’s 225
Lilacs on Brattle Street 228
A Small Plane from Boston to Montpelier 230
From The Pose of Happiness (1986) 232
Mashpee, 1979 234
Mashpee, 1952 236
After the Fire 238
Ruins 240
Mashpee Wine 242
Reading Akhmatova 245
Next Door 247
Fallen Angels 249
In the Dark Our Story 252
In the Garment District 255
A Deck of Cards 257
Teeth 260
Being Sick 263
Elementary Education 265
The Horizontal Man 267
Jewelweed 270
Pears 272
Early Winter 274
Anomie 276
Norumbega Park 278
Daylight 280
Hurricane Watch 282
Dog Days, Sweet Everlasting 284
Longfellow Park, August 286
Dutch Tulips 288
Listening to Baseball in the Car 290
Two Months in the Country 292
Graves 295
Afterward 299
To RTSL, 1985 301
Spring Planting 302
From NIGHTFIRE (1978) 304
Baseball 306

"Gail Mazur's poetry crackles with verbal invention as she confronts the inevitable upheavals of a lived life. Zeppo's First Wife, which includes excerpts from Mazur's four previous books, as well as twenty-two new poems, is epitomized by the worldly longing of the title poem. Mazur's explorations of "this fallen world, this loony world" are moving acts of empathy by a singular moral sensibility. Her poems brave the most urgent subjects - from the fraught luscious Eden of the ballpark, to the fragility of our closest human ties, to the implications for America in a world where power and war are cataclysmic for the strong as well as the weak."--Jacket.

2021-06-18