Goodbye to the Orchard: Poems [Paperback]

Steven Cramer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2004

“There isn’t a page in this book that isn’t bracing. . . .”—Marie Howe

Beginning with the word “defeat” and concluding on the word “alive,” Goodbye to the Orchard testifies that we must remain open in the face of loss, because loss is a given; and that our glimpses of the mysteries—whether of dying or living—are all we’re allowed.

Steven Cramer is the author of The Eye that Desires to Look Upward, The World Book, and Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand. He currently lives in Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The poet's young children, his affectionate wife and his sister, recently dead from cancer, dominate this deft fourth volume from the Massachusetts-based Cramer (The Eye That Desires to Look Upward). Like Robert Pinsky (whom several poems thank by name), Cramer seeks a civil, reasonable voice, a voice that brings rhyming forms and meters painlessly into middle-class American life: the "paper wasp" and "haze of gnats" in his orchard lead easily to the "so-called Secret Garden" of poets long dead. Despite the eponymous pastorals, however, Cramer is most at home in directly autobiographical lyric. Tender, surprising poems describe his wife's pregnancy ("The Toughest Thing") and shared adventures in raising a daughter and son: the former is in one poem—"so afraid/ of throwing up she only plays at home." A sheaf of elegies give the middle of the book a somber tone, from "the month my sister barely ate or drank" to memories after her death. Cramer's love poems sound genuine and affecting, and his command of everyday detail—"the circular wash/ of a street sweep's brush, strident jays, brats/ on Schwinns"—is inarguable.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"[A] deft fourth volume from the Massachusetts-based Cramer. . . . Tender, surprising poems. -- Publisher's Weekly --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Sarabande Books (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932511059
• ISBN-13: 978-1932511055
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 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: #1,549,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An emotional and thought-provoking anthology, September 12, 2005

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

This review is from: Goodbye to the Orchard: Poems (Paperback)

Goodbye to the Orchard is the fourth collection of Steven Cramer's poems. The free-verse syncopation delves deeply into memories, and thrives upon presenting familiar icons and situations in a fresh and sometimes skewed viewpoint. The middle section of the book deals directly with the death of Cramer's sister, and "talk straight" in honor of her memory. An emotional and thought-provoking anthology. "Miracle Gro": I was finishing one book about ghosts / and about to start another about ghosts / while she slept. "If life is ordinary, / so is death," our sister (soon my sister) told me // between books, then offered her solution / for my pitiful, languishing garden - / its tomatoes oozing a thin, black blood, / its shrunken peppers, with their stunted heads: // Miracle Gro and water, but not from the tap. / Our sister, our dying one... Looking up, / we watched the March light she was lying in, / unseasonably green, through the hospice window, // warm even for the South - and hatefully so, / to one who's never been much good with soil.