Good Morning and Good Night (Illinois Poetry Series) [Paperback]

David Wagoner (Author)

Book Description

Series: Illinois Poetry Series | Publication Date: January 26, 2005

By continually discovering what's new in each day without forgetting yesterday's surprises, David Wagoner has succeeded in constantly expanding his range in a career that spans more than fifty years. In "Good Morning and Good Night", this range includes his usual rich forays into nature and personalities, and poetry for all ages, young and old, amidst a vivid array of memories and explorations. Readers will find homages to the poets that have inspired him, as well as the bountiful lyricism that has made Wagoner's poetry one of our most enduring sources of delight and joy. "Good Morning and Good Night" features poems previously published in "American Poetry Review", "The American Scholar", "Atlantic Monthly", "Hudson Review", "The Kenyon Review", "New Letters", "The New Republic", "Poetry", "Shenandoah", "Southern Review", "The Yale Review", and other leading literary journals. David Wagoner is the author of seventeen books of poems and ten novels, and editor of "Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke", 1943-63. He has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the Fels Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Eunice Tjetjens Memorial and English-Speaking Union prizes from "Poetry", and fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A former Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, he was the editor of Poetry Northwest from 1966 until its last issue in 2002. A volume in the Illinois Poetry Series, edited by Lawrence Lieberman.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Every now and then in the history of literature--but not very often--a writer (usually a poet) appears who in the very development of his work (and behind it, of course, that of his person) gives us what is in its totality a work of art, by which one means a composed progress into amplitude, into triumph, so that one begins to hear the piercing sound of bugles, to see banners flying on ramparts. It is difficult to describe something so exhilarating, and nothing that has been said here demonstrates it. But David Wagoner's career is one of those, and someday--if we stay alive--history will know it." Mark Schorer, The Literature of America: Twentieth Century "Good Morning and Good Night offers the sheer pleasure of immersion in an agile, masterly, awed and polished mind. 'All waiting there for you like a riverbed,' this collection is Wagoner at his brilliant best." R. T. Smith, author of The Hollow Log Lounge

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (January 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252072391
• ISBN-13: 978-0252072390
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,769,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strongly recommended compendium of verse for personal reading as well as academic library literary collections, July 5, 2005

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Good Morning and Good Night (Illinois Poetry Series) (Paperback)

The impressively accomplished author of seventeen books of poems and ten novels, David Wagoner is also the recipient of six prizes from "Poetry" and winner of the 1981 Ruth Lilly Prize for poetry. Good Morning And Good Night is the latest anthology showcasing a master poetry at the height of his craft and is a strongly recommended compendium of verse for personal reading as well as academic library literary collections. The Getaway: They had to act natural. They had to look like/They were still parts of an ordinary day/Together on the sidewalk across the street/To the unfamiliar car, yet they had to be/Quick about it without running. They had to think/Taking those steps, remembering, knowing/Every foot they could put between their bodies/And the scene behind them, where the noise/Of buzzers and bells and yowling/And terribly shocked voices was growing/Louder and louder. They pulled away/As calmly as possible, staring straight ahead/Straight-faced, not glancing once/To either side or backward, let alone/At each other, and took a turn in the most unlikely/Direction they could think of. Under the limit,/They drove steadily, legally toward home.