Description
Book SynopsisJoyce Sutphen’s evocations of life on a small farm, coming of age in the late 1960s, and traveling and searching for balance in a very modern world are both deeply personal and familiar. Readers from Maine to Minnesota and beyond will recognize themselves, their parents, aunts and uncles, and neighbors in these poems, which move us from delight in keen description toward something like wisdom or solace in the things of this world.
In addition to poems selected from the last twenty-five years,
Carrying Water to the Field includes more than forty new poems on the themes of luck, hard work, and the ravages of time—erasures that Sutphen attempts to ameliorate with her careful attention to language and lyrical precision.
Trade Review"Precise in the language of everyday, rich in wisdom and maturity, Joyce Sutphen's newest collection, her eighth, speaks to her comfort with farm life, travel, aging, the distortions of memory."—Matt Sutherland,
Foreword Reviews"Representing nearly a quarter-century of published work,
Carrying Water to the Field attests to Joyce Sutphen's accomplishment as a lyric poet dedicated to clarity and concision. . . . The reader can dip in, selecting one perfectly crafted poem at a time and relish the weight and feel of each in their palm."—Elizabeth Hoover, (Minneapolis)
Star Tribune"Perhaps you are interested in a poet’s journey, or the story of a family, the value of meaningful work, the beauty of things well-crafted, or the muscle and music of words. Perhaps the Heartland as a place intrigues you, or maybe you are fascinated by the places the heart will take us. If any of these things matters to you, then no matter how you choose to read
Carrying Water to the Fields, you’re likely to find rewards."—Tracy Rittmueller,
Lyricality“How rare to see lyric tenderness sustained over years with no stumble into sentimentality. This remarkable collection wields a keen blade of attention, a nonchalant elegance. The reigning landscape is the Minnesota family farm of Joyce Sutphen’s girlhood, a world lost not only to her but to America. The mind at work here is not nostalgic, but piercing, acute. The city of her adulthood, her travels (especially to Ireland), and the tally of enduring and broken relationships form a faithful history of our raucous times. Chekhov comes inevitably to mind, with his remorseless stories set in the dustscapes of the Russian provinces. No regionalist, he. Joyce Sutphen is our Chekhov, only in poems.”—Patricia Hampl, author of
The Art of the Wasted Day“The writing in
Carrying Water to the Field is faultless: the language is limpid and accurate, the choreography is unerring, the forms are balanced and satisfying. And even more satisfying is the fact that this brilliant technique justifies and is justified by the truth value of these poems, which usher us into the reality of time, change, loss, and memory’s belated and beautiful insights.”—Vijay Seshadri, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
Three Sections: Poems“It is poetry that Joyce Sutphen finds in owls, marshes, tractors, harrows and mason jars: just as (amid the urgent matter of contemporary existence, literary life, love, and human frailty) she shows us the very heart and soul of her working, rooted prairie people, as shy of being caught in a poem as they once were reluctant to be photographed, but perfectly captured for us in this sweeping account of life that is both specific and universal. A stunning collection of poems.”—Anne-Marie Fyfe, author of
The House of Small AbsencesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction by Ted Kooser
Selections from Straight Out of View
Straight Out of View
The Farm
Tornado Warning
Feeding the New Calf
My Father Comes to the City
St. Joe, the Angelus
In Black
From Out the Cave
Great Salt Lake
Holland Park at Dusk
Riding East to Dover
Reading Sylvia Plath in London
Edgar’s Dream
Death Becomes Me
Suppose Death Comes Like This
What You Wanted
A Kind of Deliverance
In Quest of Agates
Living in the Body
Crossroads
Selections from Coming Back to the Body
Homesteading
Comforts of the Sun
Girl on a Tractor
A Poem with My Mother in It
Apple Season
Fields in Late October
Casino
Of Virtue
The Silence Says
A Kind of Villanelle
Her Legendary Head
Not for Burning
The Temptation to Invent
Bookmobile
Rodin on Film
Arrangement in Grey and Black
What the Heart Cannot Forget
Older, Younger, Both
Coming Back to the Body
Into Thin Air
The Assumption
Selections from Naming the Stars
Naming the Stars
Raku Songs
How We Ended Up Together
The Problem Was
Losing Touch
Polaroid # 2
Ever After
The Sound of No One Calling
Aisle and View
The Apostate’s Creed
Empty
What Comes After
In the Wake
This Body
Now That Anything Could Happen
What to Pack
Getting the Machine
Some Glad Morning
At the Moment
Now, Finally, a Love Song
Selections from First Words
First Words
The Body I Once Lived In
My Legendary Father
The Kingdom of Summer
The Aunts
My Luck
Just for the Record
Bringing in the Hay
My Dog, Pal
Harrow
The Oat Binder
“H”
What Every Girl Wants
The First Child
My Brother’s Hat
These Few Precepts
In Vermeer’s Painting
Things You Didn’t Put on Your Résumé
How to Listen
The Last Things I’ll Remember
Selections from After Words
A Dream of Empty Fields
Taking Stock
The Scythe
“Perfect Weather for Hanging Wash”
My Mother’s Secret Life
The Exam
Grandma Clara
September Afternoon, Writing
My Grandmother Sells Her Strawberry Field
The Queen of Summer Lawns
My Sister’s School Papers
Two Girls on a Hayrack
The Blue in the Distance
Things I Know
Bell Bottom Baby
The Suzuki Mother
We Have Come This Far
Next Time
Dominoes
The Last Perfect Season
Selections from Modern Love & Other Myths
Whiteout
On the Shortest Days
Winter’s Night
Like That
It’s Amazing
The Hampstead Sonnets
Bird on a Wall in County Clare
The Last Straw
Things to Watch While You Drive
The Idea of Living
The Lost Prophecy
One Thousand and One Nights
The Poem You Said You Wouldn’t Write
The One Constant Thing
Death, Inc.
Even in My Time
The Posthumous Journey of the Soul
All the People I Used to Be
For the Evening Light
Say It
The Book of Hours
Selections from The Green House
Irish Suite
A Bird in County Clare
A Postcard from the Burren
At Clonmacnoise
Playing the Pipes
This Beautiful Paper
Snow, Snow, Snow
The Sound of a Train
Writing Poetry
Why We Need Poetry
Reading the Notes in the Norton Anthology of Poetry
The Birds Walking
The Cardinal
Still Life
Constable Clouds
Bird Song, Cannon River Bottoms
Good
The Cup
New Poems
I. Luck
Those Hours
Someone Just Like You
In Iowa City One Night
Primitive
Too Much Luck
The Signal
The Fortune Cookie Writer
Eleanor Beardsley in Paris
Miracles
Chickadees
At Los Alamos
What the Music Required
So Close
The Light Left On
II. Work
The Long Centuries
What He Doesn’t Tell Us
Work
Hoeing Potatoes with My Grandmother
Horseshoes with Maurice
More of Everything
My Brothers
My Mother Breaks Her Ankle
Snowmen at the Farm
Open
Because of the Sun
Prodigal
III. Again
The Last Apples
Autumn Again
Carrying Water to the Field
Stay
What We Didn’t Talk About
My Father, Dying
After You Were Gone
Sunday Afternoon in Early May
Reading Anna Swir in October
For the Letter Writers
Without
How I’m Doing
Isla, Morning
Your Name
Making Do
