Hayden Carruth

This famous anthology includes the works of more than 130 major American poets of the modern period--Robert Frost, Paul Goodman, Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks among them--along with short biographies of each.

There can be no doubt that Hayden Carruth is one of the preeminent American poets of the late twentieth century. In these poems written since publication of his Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, he speaks with intimate and urgent clarity of love late in life, and in heartrending poems addresses his daughter's struggle against cancer. In others he engages the loves, friendships, and social concerns of a lifetime. With passion and pathos and great good humor, in poems that could only be written by a mature poet at the height of his powers, Carruth achieves a nobility of vision that is rare in any age.

A collection of works by the poet using such diverse modes as narrative, sonnet, song, monologue, satire, and meditation, yet all dealing with his perspective on life

“Carruth [is] one of the lasting literary signatures of our time.”— Library Journal (starred review) “Carruth...contains multitudes.”— Booklist (starred review) “Carruth is a people’s poet... a virtuoso of form.”— The Nation This “portable Carruth” gathers new poems with the essential works from a major American poet. Included are lyrics, short narratives, comic, meditative, and erotic poems that engage politics, music, rural poverty, and the cultural responsibility of artists. As Sam Hamill writes in the “Carruth’s great body of work is a world... Like the jazz he so loves, his poetry ranges from the formal to the spontaneous, from local vernacular to righteous oratory, from beautiful complexity to elegant understatement.” From “A Few Dilapidated Arias” “Our crumbling civilization”–a phrase I have used oftenduring recent years, in letters to friends, even inwords for public print. And what does it mean? Cana civilization crumble? At once appears the imageof an old slice of bread, stale and hard, green with mold,shaped roughly like the northeastern United States, yearsold or more, so hard and foul that even my pal Maxie,the shepherd/husky cross who eats everything, won’ttouch it. And it is crumbling, turning literally intocrumbs, as the millions of infinitesimal internal connectingfibers sever and loosen. The dust trickles and seeps away. Hayden Carruth , a longtime resident of Vermont, currently lives in upstate New York, where he taught at Syracuse University. His many honors include the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

For at least two decades Hayden Carruth has been a poet of the first quality... a writer so well endowed with character, courage, stamina, honesty, and independence as to make whatever styles he has adopted or adapted peculiarly his own.' -R.W. Flint, Parnassus

For fifty years, Hayden Carruth's poetry has been distinguished by the indelible presence of passion, compassion, and radical philosophy. Collected Longer Poems gathers the poet's choice of his narrative work and poems in sequence, including his epic on the nature of romance, The Sleeping Beauty, and meditative poems on the rural northeast that have made him the most accessible "regional" poet since Robert Frost. Our pre-eminent poet of improvisation within form, Carruth's renowned technical genius is perfectly matched to his ear for spoken language and narrative structure. By turns caustic and hilarious, his observations of that life, his own and his neighbors', ring as true as his ear for native speech. Collected Longer Poems completes the two-volume Collected Poems begun with the publication of Collected Shorter Poems in 1992, a volume that was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Hayden Carruth is a major literary figure and no survey of American poetry is complete without inclusion of his work. In this newest book of poems—the first since his 1996 National Book Award—Carruth confronts the threadbare memories of old age and the fading winter view. From the bleakest circumstances—the death of his daughter, physical and mental pain, poverty—Carruth defiantly reclaims dignity and beauty. His poetry is at once classical and modern. With the spit and bop of a great jazzman playing all the right notes, Carruth lives his music, finding the perfect low tones of terrible loss, the highs of family and friendship. Yet he is also the wise old sage of classical Greece, warning, riddling, giving generous counsel and insight. "At Rereading an Old Book" My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,The suffering. Who would have thought that pettyEndurance could achieve so much?And prayers—Were they prayers? Always I was adamantIn my irreligion, and had good reason to be.Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now,A matter of doctrine or discipline, but ratherA movement of the natural human mindBereft of its place among the animals, the otherAnimals. I prayed. Then on paper I wroteSome of the words I said, which are these poems. Hayden Carruth has won nearly every major award in poetry, including the National Book Award and the National Book Critic's circle Award. He is the author of 24 previous books of poetry and prose. He lives in Munnsville, NY.

Praise for Hayden Carruth:"Something Hayden Carruth does as well as any writer is to treat the reader as a friend, and to provide, through his poetry, hours of good company."—The New York Times Book Review"One of the lasting literary signatures of our time."—Library Journal, starred review"Carruth, like Whitman, like Chaucer, is large—he contains multitudes. Dip into his work anywhere, and there is life—and death—as stirringly felt and cogitated as in some vast, Tolstoyan novel."—Booklist, starred reviewHayden Carruth's Last Poems is a triumph—a morally engaged, tender, and fearless volume that combines the last poems of his life with the concluding poems from each of his previous volumes. Introduced by Stephen Dobyns, Last Poems is a moving tribute to a towering and beloved figure in American poetry.From "Father's Day":I don't know what fathers areSupposed to do, although the calendar saysThis is "Father's Day." But the day is gloomyAnd not at all conducive to visiting orCelebrating. I know the best thing fathers inTheir prime can do is to make daughters andMore daughters; we can never have enough.Daughters are our best protection againstLoneliness and the absurd atrocities ofForeign policy . . . Hayden Carruth (1921–2008) lived for many years in northern Vermont, then moved to upstate New York, where he taught at Syracuse University. He won the National Book Award for Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, and his Collected Shorter Poems received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Jane Kenyon, who was married to the poet Donald Hall, earned wide acclaim for her clear, vivid, deeply spiritual lyrics, many of them written in the face of her own -mortality. During the year of her dying, Carruth’s faithful correspondence, collected here, is a testament to the depth of their friendship, and a rare window into the inner life of a major poet as he confronts the loss of a dear friend. Both Carruth and Kenyon have devoted followings; Letters to Jane offers unique and personal new insight into their poetry. Of this book, Francine Prose has written, “Reading these beautiful, eloquent, moving letters from one poet to another, you keep forgetting (as you are meant to) even as, paradoxically, it never leaves your mind for a moment, that this is no casual correspondence. Its occasion is urgent and extraordinary. The recipient is dying. “. . . Carruth writes again and again—honest, direct, affectionate accounts of everyday writing and reading, visiting friends, traveling to give poetry readings, enjoying good moods and good health, enduring physical and emotional setbacks, feeding the dog and watching bee balm bloom in the garden. What’s most mysterious and marvelous about these letters—which end around the time of Kenyon’s death in 1995—is how they manage to be, simultaneously, so relaxed and so intense, so concrete and so reflective, and how every word and every sentence reminds us of the preciousness of ordinary life, and of the enduring and -sustaining consolations of friendship.” Hayden Carruth is the author of more than 20 books, predominantly poetry. His work has been awarded many honors, including the National Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Whiting Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He has also written widely on jazz and the blues. He lives in Munnsville, NY.

Hayden Carruth's From Snow and Rock, from Chaos - his first book since For You (1970) - contains a selection of his best short poems written between 1965 and 1972. Once again, the setting for many of the pieces is the Green Mountains of Vermont, where the poet and his family have lived for several years. A member of the editorial board of The Hudson Review and a regular contributor to numerous periodicals, he is the editor of the recent comprehensive paperbook anthology The Voice That is Great Within American Poetry of the Twentieth Century (1970).

For this revised edition of his epic meditation on the nature of Romance, first published in 1982 (Harper & Row), Carruth has added a 125th canto and clarified several others. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Despite being among the most erudite poets of this century, Hayden Carruth has lived his life largely outside academia. This collection of stunning autobiographical essays chronicles a lifetime of wrestling with demons and muses, chronic depression, a suicide attempt, a passionate love of jazz and blues, and unflinching honesty.

In thirteen poems, characters living in upstate New York discuss the death of a landlady, visit their old neighborhood, consider the meaning of their names, and share their observations of nature

Essays on poetry by an acclaimed poet-critic.

Five long poems, previously uncollected. This book collects five long poems that have previously appeared, with one exception, only in magazines and limited editions. One critic has called them "virtually secret." Yet they are probably the heart of Carruth’s poetic achievement, both technically and thematically. Rising from the experience of emotional illness and the asylum, the poems move at intervals and over a period of nearly fifty years toward a sustained, workable view of humanity in crisis."I have tried to create a person," Carruth writes, "specifically a seeing, living, surmounting person. Modesty is important, and so are winter and the north. A man alone in the snow is still much in this world, including the social world, though his ’in-ness’ is naturally a form of rebellion."The poems included are The Asylum , Journey to a Known Place , North Winter , Contra Mortem and My Father’s Face.

Intimate portrait of 20th century's most influential publisher, as only a great poet can see him.

In Suicides and Jazzers, Hayden Carruth reveals as never before the hard experiences that have shaped his life and art. In the lead essay, entitled "Suicide," he speaks of the psychiatric illness he has lived with for most of his life and his attempted suicide in 1988. In "Fragments of Autobiography," he shares memories of a Connecticut childhood, early ruminations about death, and his coming-of-age in small-town America. A major essay on the poetry of Paul Goodman is followed by shorter essays on Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Donald Hall, and Carolyn Kizer. In sections entitled "Elegies," "Reviews," and "Musical" Carruth celebrates fine writers and musicians who he feels have been intentionally neglected by the establishment, including authors Grace Paley and David Ignatow, tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, and, in "The Spun-Off Independent Dead-End Ten-Star Blast," white jazz musicians.

Near fine in printed white wrappers (toning to the spine) First edition - First printing, a trade paperback, issued simultaneously with hardcover. A collection of "powerfully spare and precise" lyrics (James Wright.).Winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (article laid in by Alastair Reid, one of the judges.) Notes, 100 pp.

Poems written over the past thirty-three years deal with art, nature, memories, snow, myths, war, love, knowledge, and rural life

Hayden Carruth's books of poetry include Scrambled Eggs and Poems 1991-1995, Collected Shorter Poems, and Collected Longer Poems. His awards include the Lannan Literary Award, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Poems deal with communication, art, nature, perception, memory, music, rural life, and friendship

This collection of essays and poems about the influence of jazz on writing and culture in this country, an expanded edition of the 1986 publication, is a rewarding volume for all those entranced by jazz. Carruth brings his considerable poetic and literary sensibilities to bear on a topic very near to his heart: "Those who are devoted primarily to jazz, to poetry, to all the arts, are also those who contribute more intelligently than others to our practical and moral, political and social, advancement."

A compilation of 249 poems composed in a form of James Laughlin's devising first introduced in The Secret Room. A pentastich refers to a poem of five lines, without regard to metrics. This selection is of short-line compositions in natural voice cadence.

This new seventy-minute recording features Hayden Carruth reading thirty poems from his Collected Shorter Poems, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, which won the National Book Award. The selection spans, in roughly chronological order, his celebrated career of more than fifty years. To hear Carruth give voice to poems suchg as "The Cows at Night," "Marvin McCabe," and "Regarding Chainsaws" is a rare gift.In addition to the National Book Award Hayden Carruth has been awarded a National Book Critics Circle Award, a 1995 Lannan Literary Award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, among many other honors. The author of dozens of books of poetry and prose, he is a former editor of Poetry and former poetry editor for Harper's. He lives in Munnsville, New York.

Book by Carruth, Hayden

Early poetry by a celebrated American poet. !st printing.