The Moon and Other Failures [Paperback]

F. D. Reeve (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 1999

The Moon and Other Failures presents two dozen new lyrics and a long dramatic narrative by F. D. Reeve, winner of the Golden Rose for lifelong poetic achievement. Reeve is a thinking-person's poet- meditative, weaving memories, mythic figures, personal reflections, and natural observances to arrive at larger truths. The short poems range from the elegiac "Village Graveyard" and philosophical "Coasting," a poem of almost perfect proportions, to such love poems as "Voices," and the witty "Telephone." Some of the poems express the sadness of irrecoverable loss; some the inevitability; and some rejoice in consequent rebirth and renewal. Repeatedly, throughout the book, the past is brought up against the present, this world against the next, the particular against the general. 
 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

F. D. Reeve has published approximately two dozen books of fiction, translations, and poetry. His honors include the New England Poetry Society's Golden Rose award and an award in literature from the American Academy National Institute of Arts and Letters. He earned a D. Lit. from New England College, and lives in Wilmington, Vermont. Reeve was once a Hudson River longshoreman and has spent years walking the earth, journeying out from his home state Vermont, over hills and through valleys from Mendocino to Murom, from Culebra to Komarovo. Reeve is the founding editor of Poetry Review. Currently he is a professor of letters emeritus at Wesleyan University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"The house of Heaven, like the Luxembourg full of statues, With its old families who used to constellate the sky Burns to ashes. Wandering the streets of Paris, No one remembers the moon and other failures."

Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Michigan State University Press; 1 edition (August 31, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870135147
• ISBN-13: 978-0870135149
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 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: #4,542,593 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

F. D. (Frank) Reeve , poet and novelist, worked on the docks before taking up an academic career. He has published ten volumes of poetry, seven books of fiction, twelve books of translations, three books of literary criticism, four libretti, and countless uncollected essays, articles, stories, poems, reviews, and translations in journals across the country from The Atlantic to The New Yorker and The Sewanee Review, reviewed for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and served as a professor of letters at Wesleyan University, where he was honored for his passionate commitment to teaching. Reeve's writing has won him an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Golden Rose of the New England Poetry Society, and a D. Lit. from New England College.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hauntingly beautiful collection of memorable verse., February 4, 2000

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

This review is from: The Moon and Other Failures (Paperback)

The Moon And Other Failures is a hauntingly beautiful collection of poems fully documenting the impressive artistic talent and astonishing literary range of F.D. Reeve. Lake Champlain: The rocks rise from the water: the wind, from the West./Old fables constellate the sky./The woods are full of spiders. Abenaki ghosts/in bark canoes glide among the pines./On the granite cliff we sleep in each other's arms/under the cast of a mythic spell/by long, sweet summer love made soft and brown,/waiting for the great lake god himself/to deliver the past into our native hands./We dream we are the islands and water/that sing through the trees of the happy hunting grounds/where the starry animals are slaughtered/and trapped souls shaking in the morning light/as in a web spiral off to death./Awake, we step across our long-lost lives/stone by stone, breath by breath.