4/7/08

Book of the Week #15

Richard Eberhart: Selected Poems 1930-1965. (New Directions, 1965.)

In honor of National Poetry Month I selected a volume of poetry for this weeks' book. Richard Eberhart, who was born on April 5, 1904, lived many of his 101 years in New Hampshire. He won the Pulitzer Prize for this book.

From the Foreword, written by Richard Eberhart:

"If some wound in the soul were healed there would be no need to write poems. Poetry is continuously aggravating perception into expressing life. It evaluates our unique passage through time. The compulsion to create comes from awareness of being. It is ultimately a recognition of man's estate and of his fate, and ultimately poetry is praise."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love this book--one of my personal essentials. But it's out of print while the much, much inferior The Long Reach (containing none of the poems that made Eberhart's reputation) remains inexplicably available. New Directions needs to reprint this judicious award-winning Selected! Maybe readers of this blog can encourage the publisher to see its way to this.