The Age of Reasons

Uncollected Poems 1969–1982

Ted Greenwald, Miles Champion

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780819576262
• eBook ISBN:
  9780819576279
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

This collection of Ted Greenwald's poetry, edited by Miles Champion, is a sampler of some of Greenwald's most breathtaking work. A New York poet with close ties to the New York School and the Language poets, Greenwald has written daily since the early 1960s, and none of the poems in this book are included in any of his books to date. These discrete works were written in advance of or alongside the extended explorations of a mutated triolet form that increasingly occupied him from the late 1970s on. This book can be seen as a companion to Common Sense, and provides further evidence of Greenwald's ability to think with his ear, to hear what's said as it arrives as a fresh sound or shape in his head. This work is singular in its pattern-making, its music-making, and its ability to simultaneously follow multiple paths. An online reader's companion will be available at tedgreenwald.site.wesleyan.edu

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Editor’s Note
• “man / who write”
• Show and Tell
• “air like art”
• Poem (“at this point in history”)
• A Good Night’s
• “do / they / worry”
• Waiting Spoon
• Air
• I Love You
• Somebody Wants You
• The Coast
• Poem (“theirs”)
• You
• In the Meantime
• It’s Asking
• Sunnyside Up
• There’s a Meaning
• Dance
• Down the Drain
• Salad Days
• Curtain
• After
• Going My Way
• How Many Years Is It Now
• Kiss
• “I open / my eyes”
• Scalp Excitement
• How Is It
• The Sandwich Islands
• “air / joins / us”
• Mufti Explodes
• Delicate Petals
• Everything Seems
• Over the Edge
• How Watchful of Passersby
• Eyelids Turn
• Almost Amazement
• A Technical Report
• Open the Window to the Soul
• Aeolian Harp
• Form-Fitting Hips
• “clouds hang in the distance up”
• The Event
• Art
• “birdsong / kick / this”
• Seated on a Hill
• As If Nothing Happens
• Oh, My Goodness
• When Looking Over the Room
• The Day Following
• Out of Thin Air
• When You Start
• Poem (“clouds / over / the mountains”)
• “industrial / amazement”
• The Outlying District
• From There
• Heartstrings
• Talk’s Disappearing
• Attention
• To Hold
• Spare Hours
• Bagged Whims Excite
• Lock Up the Chairs