Field Guide (Volume 68 of the Yale Series of Younger Poets) [Paperback]

Robert Hass (Author), Stanley Kunitz (Foreword)

Product Details

• Paperback: 90 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300016514
• ISBN-13: 978-0300016512
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,276,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Hass was born in San Francisco in 1941. He attended St. Mary's College and Stanford University. His books of poetry include Time and Materials, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and the National Book Award in 2008; Sun Under Wood, for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1996; Human Wishes; Praise, for which he received the William Carlos Williams Award in 1979; and Field Guide, which was selected by Stanley Kunitz for the Yale Younger Poets Series. Hass also worked with Czeslaw Milosz to translate a dozen volumes of Milosz's poetry, including the book-length Treatise on Poetry and, most recently, A Second Space. His translations of the Japanese haiku masters have been collected in The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa. His books of essays include Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1984, and Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns, 1997-2000. From 1995 to 1997 he served as poet laureate of the United States. He lives in northern California with his wife, the poet Brenda Hillman, and teaches English at the University of California at Berkeley.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Landscape of Hass's thoughts, March 29, 2009

By 

Dr. Bojan Tunguz (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Field Guide (Yale Series of Younger Poets) (Paperback)

Robert Hass is a former Poet Laureate of the United States and this is his first book of poetry. As a poet Hass is mostly an autodidact, and he learned the art of poetry long before the poetry workshops became popular. This results in much freshness and variety of the forms that his poems take. And yet even in these early poems one can sense a lot of maturity and self-assurance in the use of language that oftentimes come with many years of experience. He is confident enough to be able to use even the simplest language in his poems in order to convey complex and nonobvious images.

The landscape that Robert Hass provides us with is primarily the landscape of California. It is the landscape of a magnificent coast, but it's also a landscape of its people and thoughts. Hass is a keen observer of the human nature in its habitat, and he reports it sometimes with its raw nakedness, even if this verges on provocative and vulgar.

The poems in this collection vary in style and length, from three-line haikus, to more prose-like poems that span several pages. All of them, however, bear Hass' unique signature and style. They are a refreshing read and highly enjoyable for every lover of poetry.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hass' first poetry book, July 17, 2008

By 

Charleen Merced (Stamford, CT and sometimes in Puerto Rico) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Field Guide (Yale Series of Younger Poets) (Paperback)

Field Guide is Robert Hass' first volume. An experimental assortment of poetry that uses images of the California landscape, as well as images of everyday life, as a form of meditation. Interesting poems, thought provoking and strangely positive. The poems also explore many forms and through them Hass is looking for his voice.