The Gates Of The Elect Kingdom (Iowa Poetry Prize) [Paperback]

John Wood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1997 | Series: Iowa Poetry Prize

The four parts of this highly accomplished collection showcase the different facets and wide breadth of John Wood's poetic talent. Displayed here are his ability to sustain a sequence, his adeptness with lyricism and the short form, and his sensuous feeling for this life and the life of the past. In regard to the latter, Wood begins the book with his poetic account of the amazing life and adventures of the vigorous American utopianist Wilhelm Johannes Hoade. Wood's account reads like a novel as he weaves a fictional narrative out of lyric poetry, a narrative that is finally convincing and true in spite of its obvious impossibility. The second section, "Homage to Dafydd ap Gwilym," is a free but artistically faithful translation after some of the medieval Welsh poet's major poems, arranged in a way to suggest in a natural/supernatural mode his remarkable character and biography. The third part is a group of finely tuned, mostly lyric poems dealing with family, friends, and intellectual concerns; the fourth is a group of contemporary and historical "revelations," quite striking in scope and variety. All combine to form a dazzling whole.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Angelic Revelation
The Bathers
The Beginning Of The Progress
Carla Tobit Tells The Women That He Is Gone
Chivaree And Dance For The Marriage Of Melchor And Carla
Divisions Of Labor
Emma Goldman Thinks Of Hoade
The Expulsion Of The Heretics
Exultation Melchior Tobit, The First Black Hoadeite, Leads
For My Father
Four Sexual Miniataures: 1. Elegant Old Pederast
Four Sexual Miniataures: 2. Mr. Lawrence, Priest Of Love
Four Sexual Miniataures: 3. Romance Novelist
Four Sexual Miniataures: 4. Afternoon With An Aesthete
Gifts
The History Of The Kiss
Hoade's Return
Homage To Dafydd Ap Gwilym
The Honey Of Hellas
How Little Lillian Found The Lord And Served Him
I Dream Of Perfect Forms
The Imminent Retgurn And The Congress Of The Elect
The Injunction
Lament And Doubts
The Last Survivor
Melchior And The Butterflies
The Murder Of Melchior
The Omega Vision
Proem
Professional Dreams
Remembering A Young Poet I'd Known In College
Sacred Celebrations: 1. Akathist For The Virgin
Sacred Celebrations: 2. The Demon Brought Down On Breton
Sacred Celebrations: 3. The Cheerleaders At St. Agatha's
Sacred Celebrations: 4. Communion At Glendalough
Sacred Celebrations: 5. Akathist For Love: The Canonization
Thinking Of My Mother
Transcendental Sex Sonnet
A Vision Of Kansas
Waiting For Jesus
Withdrawal And Return
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 85 pages
• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press; 1 edition (March 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0877455813
• ISBN-13: 978-0877455813
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,500,047 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.