Living Things: Collected Poems [Paperback]

Anne Porter (Author), David Shapiro (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2006

Living Things contains all the poems in Porter’s National Book Award Finalist collection, An Altogether Different Language, plus forty-four new works. David Shapiro writes in his foreword, “Anne Porter’s diction is as modest as that of William Carlos Williams or of a poet she nurtured as a houseguest for many years, James Schuyler. . . . She has the quality of paying attention to ultimate reality that Fairfield Porter, who painted her so often alone and with their five children, told me should be the conclusion of every sermon. . . . She is an American religious poet of stature who reminds us that the idea of the holy is still possible for us.” Living Things is a book for any lover of fine poetry, but will be particularly inspiring and meaningful to Christians whose faith is strong, and would make a beautiful gift.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The last book of poems from Anne Porter, the widow of painter Fairfield Porter, was a 1999 National Book Award finalist An Altogether Different Language. This book reprints the 80-odd poems of that collection and adds 44 more of Porter's beautiful hymns to light, to friends and family, and to God, "an aeon / Of refining fire." Porter writes what might best be called plainsong: short, unadorned works that, like gospel or folk music, cut directly to the ambiguous heart of things. Among the new poems, there is "A Short Prayer" to Mary, paeans to friends Emmett Kelly and Terry Berrigan (as well as to "3 Birds," "The Roofs of Paris" and "The Song of the Wren"), and depictions of everything from "A Painter's Life" to "A Turtle's Shell" (the two poems appear back-to-back). It is a beautiful book, one in which fans of Virginian Hamilton Adair, Amy Clampitt and James Schuyler (often a guest at the Porter home) will find "That secret other poetry / Which never will be written."
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Review

"Porter's beautiful hymns to light, to friends and family, and to God, "an aeon / Of refining fire." Porter writes what might best be called plainsong: short, unadorned works that, like gospel or folk music, cut directly to the ambiguous heart of things. . . . It is a beautiful book, one in which fans of Virginian Hamilton Adair, Amy Clampitt and James Schuyler (often a guest at the Porter home) will find "That secret other poetry / Which never will be written."
— Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Zoland Books (January 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1581952163
• ISBN-13: 978-1581952162
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #372,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ...not exactly a review, May 1, 2009

By 

Virginia J. Prickett "retired librarian" (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Living Things: Collected Poems (Paperback)

Just this morning (May 1, 2009), The Writer's Almanac posted a poem from this collection that I liked so much I came to Amazon to buy the book.

MUSIC

When I was a child

I once sat sobbing on the floor

Beside my mother's piano

As she played and sang

For there was in her singing

A shy yet solemn glory

My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked

Why I was crying

I had no words for it

I only shook my head

And went on crying

Why is it that music

At its most beautiful

Opens a wound in us

An ache a desolation

Deep as a homesickness

For some far-off

And half-forgotten country

I've never understood

Why this is so

Bur there's an ancient legend

From the other side of the world

That gives away the secret

Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries

We have been wandering

But we were made for Paradise

As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us

With its heavenly beauty

It brings us desolation

For when we hear it

We half remember

That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields

Their fragrant windswept clover

The birdsongs in the orchards

The wild white violets in the moss

By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it

Is the longed-for beauty

Of the One who waits for us

Who will always wait for us

In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us

And wanders where we wander.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Porter's Poems are small jewels, March 29, 2010

By 

Roberta S., Phillabaum "ballet enthusiast" (Baton Rouge LA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Living Things: Collected Poems (Paperback)

Anne Porter has been described as a religious poet, and she is that. But she is also a personal poet, an observer of nature, and a poet of quiet positivity. She sees ordinary things in a way that makes them magical; conversely, in her writing the great mysteries become accessible in ordinary things. There is not one poem in this book that does not speak to the reader.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Word paintings, September 14, 2009

By 

A reader from Washington DC (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Living Things: Collected Poems (Paperback)

Anne Porter paints at least as well in words as her husband, Fairfield Porter, did in oils. Her sensibility is acute, her word choices splendid, her images vivid and appealing. Just look at this verse from her poem "Consider the Lilies of the Sea:"

"The two joined petals of a small

Tooth-white clamshell stand ajar, and mimic

The opening of wings or of a songbook;

Leaves that a minute and obscure

Death sprung open in a depth of sea;

Held in one's hand, they still present

The light obedient gesture that let go of time."