Olson's first book of new poetry in sixteen years. Human Nature is the poet and novelist Toby Olson's first book of new poetry since We Are the Fire (New Directions, 1984). The intervening years saw five of his novels published to strong critical acclaim. "But," says Olson, "one day I woke from fiction to discover I'd not written a poem in close to ten years. How to return to poetry after being away from it so long?" Certainly not in repetition of things done before. In Human Nature, Olson joins the novelist's art to the poet's reflections of friends and events and times gone by. When memory fades, replaced by story, the reader of these remarkable narrative meditations begins to realize the ways in which poetry might disclose different truths, born of the reinvention of experience. "In Human Nature," says Olson, "even the most autobiographical poems let fiction in."
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
A work that demonstrates the remarkable achievement of a lyric poet. -- World Literature Today, Rochelle Owens, Summer 2000
About This
Angry Opening
Cloud-castle Blues
Collaborative Piece
Facing
Hat In Hand
Heavenly Weather
Human Nature
Just This Again
Little Angel
Moose
My Daughter
My Son
Old Musical Chair
Oppressive Heat
Remarkable Storm
The Sign
Sled
Spring Is Here
Standard-15, My Old Flame
Typical Sad Song
Wanda And I: 1. Perpetual Calendar
Wanda And I: 2. Robert's Blues
Wanda And I: 3. Just About Anybody
Wanda And I: 4. Car
Wanda And I: 5. A Few Dozen People
Wanda And I: 6. Wanda And I
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
It is Toby Olson's stunning contribution that he can bring the storyteller's art back into poetry.... With Human Nature, Toby Olson takes his place as a crossover artist, an American original of major proportions. -- Jerome Rothenberg
Olson's first book of poems in 16 years; it's good to have him back. -- Philadelphia Inquirer, Scott Edward Anderson, 8 October 2000
The blending of the novelist's craft with the poet's sensibilities leaves us with works that are daring, thoughtful, and intelligent. -- American Book Review, Louis McKee, January 2001
The immensely poignant loop of time passing and the timeless art of the storyteller have joined to make a human life speak, again and again and again. This is a master's work without question, his own defining; time out of mind. -- Robert Creeley
This is a text of uncommon visceral immediacy and visionary originality. -- Easy Reader 6 July 2000
About This
Angry Opening
Cloud-castle Blues
Collaborative Piece
Facing
Hat In Hand
Heavenly Weather
Human Nature
Just This Again
Little Angel
Moose
My Daughter
My Son
Old Musical Chair
Oppressive Heat
Remarkable Storm
The Sign
Sled
Spring Is Here
Standard-15, My Old Flame
Typical Sad Song
Wanda And I: 1. Perpetual Calendar
Wanda And I: 2. Robert's Blues
Wanda And I: 3. Just About Anybody
Wanda And I: 4. Car
Wanda And I: 5. A Few Dozen People
Wanda And I: 6. Wanda And I
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
It is Toby Olson's stunning contribution that he can bring the storyteller's art back into poetry.... With Human Nature, Toby Olson takes his place as a crossover artist, an American original of major proportions. -- Jerome Rothenberg
Olson's first book of poems in 16 years; it's good to have him back. -- Philadelphia Inquirer, Scott Edward Anderson, 8 October 2000
The blending of the novelist's craft with the poet's sensibilities leaves us with works that are daring, thoughtful, and intelligent. -- American Book Review, Louis McKee, January 2001
The immensely poignant loop of time passing and the timeless art of the storyteller have joined to make a human life speak, again and again and again. This is a master's work without question, his own defining; time out of mind. -- Robert Creeley
This is a text of uncommon visceral immediacy and visionary originality. -- Easy Reader 6 July 2000
About the Author
Toby Olson is the author of twenty-one previous books of poetry and eight novels, among them, from New Directions, The Life of Jesus (1976) and Seaview (1982), winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He has been a recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller and the Guggenheim Foundations as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dreams, Desires, and Mournful Memories,
By B. Meltzer (United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Human Nature: Poems (Paperback)
Of extraordinary beauty and power, Toby Olson's new poems plumb the depths of "human nature," its dreams, desires, and mournful memories -- a woman dancing on a table in a bar, a mother who has lost her mind, two close friends talking to each other about dying. A moving tribute to parents, siblings, lovers, and friends -- the poet's own bold "face in the bandages of memory." In Olson's long-awaited return to poetry from his award-winning fiction (Seaview), this work is, once again, as timeless as human nature itself. It promises to resonate with poets and nonpoets alike, with what is profoundly human in all of us.
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First Sentence:
. . . and came down into the city on our sled and saw a woman dancing on a table. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
paso doble Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Four Freshmen, Lake Winnebago, New Jersey, Night Finder New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
. . . and came down into the city on our sled and saw a woman dancing on a table. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
paso doble Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Four Freshmen, Lake Winnebago, New Jersey, Night Finder New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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71
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- Interpreting Minds by Radu J. Bogdan in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago (Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society) by Michael Willrich on page 250, and page 271
- The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett by Lee Oser in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Seaview: A Novel (Rediscovery) by Toby Olson in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Alasdair MacIntyre (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus) by Mark C. Murphy in Back Matter
See all 71 books citing this book
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