The Grace of Necessity [Paperback]

Sam Green (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2008

For the past 25 years Samuel Green has lived on a tiny island only four square miles in size populated by fewer than a hundred people. The island has no regular phone service, no electricity, no stores. These poems are informed by the lessons Green has learned living in a

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Few poets seem to live their poetry as much as Green does. This book’s second part, “Daily Practice, 2001–2002,” impressively showcases this aspect of his work. Each poem in it records something from the day that is its title, from the dragonfly on a branch of “Aug. 26” (“a minor thing / until the sun . . . pours itself through / a single tilted wing”) to the falling plums impossible not to see as an allusion of “Sept. 11” to the dance of housecleaning of “April 27” and “the unexpected groan of lovers” of “June 12.” Green perhaps states the key to his astonishingly universal personal poetry in the opening of “June 19”: “One secret is to want / what the world is.” Despite the pain and loss the world inflicts—the book’s first part is full of elegies, for animals and qualities of character (see “Teaching My Son to Kill”), for the deaths and long sufferings of poets and others—Green wants the world. After all, it has its pleasures, too: read the love poems of part 3, whose title, “The Only Time We Have,” is another expression of acceptance. Poetry of Frostian resonance and depth. --Ray Olson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Samuel Green has lived nearly all his life in the Pacific Northwest. He joined the U.S. Coast Guard at 17, and saw service first in Antarctica, and then in South Vietnam. Later he earned his M.A. in English from Western Washington University through the Veterans Vocational Rehabilitation Program. He has been a visiting poet at colleges in Utah, Wyoming, and Washington, most recently at Seattle University, teaching winter quarters in Seattle, and summer quarters in Ireland. His poems have appeared in Poet & Critic, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, and many other journals. For the past two dozen years Green has lived in a hand-built log house on a tiny, remote island, where he and his wife, Sally, are publishers of the award-winning Brooding Heron Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 105 pages
• Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press (March 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887484794
• ISBN-13: 978-0887484797
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 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: #1,506,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book itself is a necessary grace!, February 6, 2009

By 

Lauren B. Davis (Princeton, New Jersey) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Grace of Necessity (Paperback)

Samuel Green, the poet laureate of Washington State, is a splendid poet, and this new book continues his terrific work. This is partly a book of poetic days, partly a meditation on death and grief, partly observations on life in ordinary time, partly a celebration of love, entirely crafted by a master of attentiveness. Green is able to capture the piercing, crystal moment and make us see it in a new way -- which is surely the gift of a master poet. Much of his work reflects the life he and his wife Sally have lived for the past he past 25 years on remote Waldron Island off the Washington coast in a log house he built himself. What a wonderful place it must be. I can't recommend his work highly enough. Enjoy.