Prodigal

New and Selected Poems, 1976–2014

Linda Gregerson

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780544301672
• eBook ISBN:
  9780544301689
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

In her first book of collected work, prize-winning poet Linda Gregerson mines nearly forty years of poetry, bringing us a full range of her talents.
Ten new poems introduce Prodigal, followed by fifty poems, culled from Gregerson's five collections, that range broadly in subject from class in America to our world's ravaged environment to the wonders of parenthood to the intersection of science and art to the passion of the Roman gods, and beyond. This selection reinforces Gregerson's standing as "one of poetry's mavens . . . whose poetics seek truth through the precise apprehension of the beautiful while never denying the importance of rationality" ( Chicago Tribune).
A brilliant stylist, known for her formal experiments as well as her perfected lines, Gregerson is a poet of great vision. Here, the growth of her art and the breadth of her interests offer a snapshot of a major poet's intellect in the midst of her career.

From the Life of Saint Peter

(Brancacci Chapel, Florence)

1. HIS SHADOW

They brought us out on the pavement then,

our pallets

and cots, the

poorest barely decent in their bedclothes.

And facing

as best we could the sun,

so whether

he would or no his passing shadow might

pass over us and we

be healed. As if

some ghastly catalogue of everything you

fear the flesh

might one day have in store for you should

suddenly block

your way back home.

But look

how the painter has lovingly rendered the clubs

of my knees. Gall-

knots, hooves

of callus you would surely look away from in the

ordinary

course of things, calves

like an afterthought trailing behind. I wonder

will I get to keep some sign of this when I’m made

whole.

I’ve come to think

the body scorns hypothesis, hasn’t it

paid for its losses

in kind? While we are writ in water. My

advantage here

was learning so early how little the world will

spare us. Now

this rumored cure:

You see

the peeling fresco? It was once as chaste as you.

2. THE DEATH OF ANANIAS

There must have been something with-

held as if

you know the story you’ll

know has been said about me.

I saw what we all saw: goats and cattle,

grain,

an ancient and three newer family

houses and finally

the second-best vineyard for miles around

converted

into silver and simply

laid on the ground at their feet.

And namely the one called Peter: how

is it

that one among equals will seem

to have harnessed the moon

and stars. I understood the next

part, how the

logic went: we hadn’t been

savages all our lives, we’d helped

the poor before. But this was something

else, was like

the dizzying vista above the gorge:

you think you’ve been quite

happy, your loved ones are waiting to

welcome you

home and you can taste the broken rocks

below through all your broken

teeth, you know the terror won’t be

over until

you’ve thrown your one allotted life

away. And so

I stepped back, just a little, from the

edge.

What kind of reckoning after all requires

this all-or-nothing? Hadn’t I

torn the lovely acres from my heart?

Which ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• New Poems
• Sostenuto
• The Wrath of Juno
• The Weavers
• Font
• The Dolphins
• The Wrath of Juno
• Heliotrope
• Pythagorean
• Ceres Lamenting
• And Sometimes,
• FROM Fire in the Conservatory
• FROM De Arte Honeste Amandi
• Geometry
• Maudlin; Or, the Magdalen’s Tears
• Wife
• Much Missed
• Fire in the Conservatory
• “Halfe a Yard of Rede Sea”
• FROM The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep
• The Bad Physician
• For My Father, Who Would Rather Stay Home
• Safe
• An Arbor
• Good News
• For the Taking
• The Resurrection of the Body
• Bunting
• Salt
• Creation Myth
• With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath
• Target
• Bleedthrough
• The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep
• FROM Waterborne
• Eyes Like Leeks
• Noah’s Wife
• Cord
• Maculate
• The Horses Run Back to Their Stalls
• Waterborne
• Pass Over
• Narrow Flame
• Grammatical Mood
• FROM Magnetic North
• Sweet
• Bicameral
• Make-Falcon
• Bright Shadow
• Father Mercy, Mother Tongue
• At the Window
• The Turning
• My Father Comes Back from the Grave
• Over Easy
• Prodigal
• Elegant
• FROM The Selvage
• The Selvage
• Slight Tremor
• Constitutional
• Lately, I’ve taken to
• Getting and Spending
• Dido Refuses to Speak
• From the Life of Saint Peter
• Her Argument for the Existence of God
• Still Life
• NOTES
• INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES
• Read More from Linda Gregerson
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR