New & Selected Poems [Paperback]

William Corbett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1995

poems

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In "Prayer," William Corbett offers a good example of why his work is so appealing. He writes, "When white haired / unsteady on my feet / near deaf, half blind / soon to breathe my last / may I still enjoy / the guilty pleasure / come from a movie / into bright summer sun." Corbett's trademark qualities are all here: the delicate balancing of life's scales between misery (the speaker's anticipated decrepitude, in this case) and joy (the stolen indulgence of a matinee), the communal sharing of a solitary pleasure, and the poem's acoustic tightness (note how the poem's sounds become more bold with each line, from those whispery ws at the beginning to the alliteration at the poem's close). This collection reprints Corbett's book-length poems and includes his haiku-influenced poetic snapshots, as well as many fine lyric meditations.

From Booklist

Corbett has chosen to begin his mettlesome retrospective with his newest poems, opting for "reverse chronology" because "a poet's career need not be measured upward like a flight of stairs." True enough, but whatever order he imposes on his work, Corbett swings. His confiding, bemused, and warmly observant poems flow, soar, and stride with hardly a mark of punctuation. That's how perfect his meter is, how musical his word choice, how clear his ideas. Corbett is sophisticated, topical, and engagingly conversational, finding humor wherever he can but paying sorrow its due, too. Corbett writes about baseball, jazz, flowers, friends, family, and traumas small and silly, grand and endless. He mourns the dead and speculates about the living. There are 37 new poems here, selections from several earlier collections, and two long poems that have long been out of print, the bebopping "Columbus Square Journal" and the beautiful "Runaway Pond." Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Zoland Books; 1st edition (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0944072542
• ISBN-13: 978-0944072547
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,083,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important books published in the 1990's, October 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: New & Selected Poems (Paperback)

William Corbett's New & Selected Poems is a book to savor. It's one of those rare books that makes the ready truly happy to own the book as a physical thing. Zoland Books has published a beautiful volume to present this masterful selection of Corbett's work. No American poet currently writing has the true sense of musicality that Corbett possesses. He is surpassed only by the late Elizabeth Bishop. It confounds me that Corbett's work is so little known. Perhaps this generous sampling will bring him the wider audience he so deserves.