"Our favorite 'unsung' poet," were the words Chapters Bookstore used when including Karl Kirchwey's The Engrafted Word among their 1998 favorite books. Now, in this new volume, Kirchwey -whose work has garnered high praise from such poets as Richard Wilbur, John Hollander, and James Merrill and who has been the recipient of prestigious prizes and fellowships-continues his explorations into the impact of the past on the present. But he also adds a strong dimension of moral gravity and social satire along with a deeper-and deeply moving-element of the personal. At the Palace of Jove displays Kirchwey's great gifts, offering poems of uncommon wit, piercing intelligence, visionary clarity, and generous emotional power.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Former director at the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York, Kirchwey published his first three collections in the previous decade, beginning with 1990's A Wandering Island and continuing on to The Engrafted Word (1998). His first 21st century volume finds Kirchwey still looking back to the classical world for inspiration and tropes to deal with loss, loneliness and nostalgia and for modern atrocities eerily in line with the horrors of Greek drama: "Blown up by the guns of knowledge, four walls of a schoolhouse/ stagger back, lost in the gold of a glade...// and the brain of Pajazit Deliaj placed on a mattress/ to witness his murdered wife Hava's body." Kirchwey divides the book into "Satires" "Anatomies" (such as the above poem on the war in Kosovo) "Elegies" and "Imitations." Most successful are the "Elegies"-not strictly poems of mourning, but quiet inquiries into "what the mind does/ to compensate for the spiritual silence." In "Creusa (after Aeneid, Book II)," a poem for the poet's mother or perhaps merely for innocence lost, the mother refuses to appear, as did Aeneas's, bearing knowledge from a higher plane-or even "Her Benson & Hedges and her glass of vodka." Concerned with memory and ways of fruitfully processing pasts personal and historical, the poet takes stock of the might-have-beens and alternate lives, finding "We have built lives, citizens/ apart." This line is classic Kirchwey: in summing up 2,000 plus years of social thought, it takes one of the tiny rhetorical steps that separate people until "all is covered/ all is nonchalance/ between us."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
...confident, witty, and often surprising... -- The New York Times Book Review, January 12, 2003
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Through your labor, but also through your main idea.,
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This review is from: At the Palace of Jove PA: Poems (Paperback)
This poet is dynamic in using imagery and sources of classic literature! Kirchwey uses brilliant metaphoric tones and colorful phrases, weaving fantasy into the things of the modern world. What keeps me from giving this review an extra star is that Karl tends to add parts and sentiments that stray from the main idea of some of his works. Some of them may be confusing to some readers. A poet should always stay connected with getting his intended point across. I would recommend this book and I do value his use of fantasy entwined with reality. And understand, I'm not saying all of his poems stray from the point. Many of them are rich in meaning and knowledge. Read this this one and see what it's worth.
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