Description
Book SynopsisThis collection is compiled from the unpublished poems of Karl Shapiro at the University of Texas in Austin and elsewhere. They are largely as Shapiro left them, in a desk drawer in his apartment in uptown Manhattan.
"Proposition" When we’re old lovers, sitting in separate chairs
Silently, will you think our love has faded
Though we smile richly and are still unaided
By doctors, accountants and presumptuous heirs?
Though talk has frozen in geologic layers
Of long alignment of the loved and hated
And even our sexuality is jaded
And we have settled all our private cares
Including death, listen to me, adored,
Words cannot fail us ever, no matter how
The fates brighten their implements to prove
That even gods and geniuses get bored
With marriage, fucking and poetic love,
Because, beloved, we call each other thou.
Table of Contents
- Foreword by Robert Phillips vii
-
LOVE POEMS
- The Dinner Party 1
- Waiting for Takeoff 2
- Moving In 3
- Homework 5
- Interior 6
- German 7
- Sea Dance 8
- Letter-Poem 9
- A Kind of Gift 11
- A Thank-You 13
- Poems Like Flowers 14
- The Meaning 15
- "I'll Get Back to You" 16
- Spate 17
- An Exorcism 18
- Archaeology 19
- God 20
- Proposition 21
- Lost and Found 22
- The Bestower 23
- Total Immersion 24
- Torso 25
- Torso Fetish 26
- The Legs 28
- The Walk-Through 29
- Talisman 30
- No Doubt 31
- The Spear 32
- Rights 33
-
ROSE POEMS
- Late Bloomer 37
- Hothouse Flower 38
- Harvest 39
- Prepositions 40
- Vase of Dead Roses 41
-
VARIOUS POEMS
- The Day That Painting Died 45
- The Camera 46
- Ballpoint Pens 47
- The Sacred Blue 48
- Landscape 49
- I Declare Peace 50
- The Soldier 51
- After the Surrender 52
- Trajectory 53
- Feminist Poem 54
- Proverbs 55
- The Tenses 56
- Second Opinion 57
- An Apology to a Bulldog 58
- Karl Shapiro 59
- Bar Mitzvah 60
- The Jewish Problem 62
- Again, for Sophie 64
- About the Author 67
