Singing Yet: New and Selected Poems [Hardcover]

Stan Rice (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 16, 1992

A collection of new and previously published poems by the winner of the Academy of American Poets Edgar Allan Poe Award offers generous selections from the poet's three previous collections.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Rice, a low-profile West Coast poet with three small-press books to his name, has now published this volume of new and selected poems with a major New York house. His first book in nine years, it may well expand the audience for his intense, painfully bright poems, which often recall Roethke: "Jane was my jam/ The movement of fish/ fleshed out her dress." While Rice often exhibits a dry wit, his work is dead serious. The bruised center of this collection is the death of a young daughter from leukemia, a loss that is dealt with directly in the selections from White Boy (Mudra, 1975) and Some Lamb (Figures, 1975) and that continues to surface in many later poems. Indeed, one sometimes fears that the poet's concentration was irrevocably shattered by the event. But in the newer poems--the quietly moving "Walking with My Son to the Creek in the Dark Which He Fears" or the coldy humorous "Icy Gravy" ("I have seen the ladle/ rise and fall/ from the icy cradle")--Rice seems to have marshaled his powers again. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
- Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib . , New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The 29th Month
3 A.m. Opening The Window
Advocating Melancholy
Aesthetic Theory
After Massacre
America The Beautiful
American Rain
Anne's Curls
Artist & Model
At The Movies
Authority
Blood
The Bones Of Woe
Breaking The Silence
Breakings
Cannibal
The Cry-bird Journey
Cycle
The Dazzles: 1
The Dazzles: 2
The Dazzles: 3
Deadletter I
Deadletter Ii
Deja Vu Again
The Doctrine Of Perception As Animal Hunger
Dog
The Dogchain Gang
Double Solitaire
Dying Goldfish
Eating It
Elegy
The Elephant House
Emotions
The Engines
Excess Is Ease
The Fall
Fear Of Homosexual Rape
The Feminine Principle
First Xmas After Daughterdeath
Five Rhymes
Forgetting Her Birthday
Found
Four Days In Another City: 1
Four Days In Another City: 2
Four Days In Another City: 3
Four Days In Another City: 4
Four Days In Another City: 5
Four Days In Another City: 6
Four Days In Another City: 7
Four Days In Another City: 8
Four Wolves
Fourth Of July In The Rich Man's House
Friends Like These
Gallon Aquarium
Getting Lost
Gone Fishing
Graffiti
He Who Waits
History: Madness
Homecoming
How Keep Dark And Pattern Off
I Called The Cow
I Ride The Flying Pig
Icy Gravy
The Iliad
In Debt
In The Hospital Courtyard
Incanto: 1
Incanto: 2
Incanto: 3
Incanto: 4
Irrational Monologues: 1
Irrational Monologues: 2\
Irrational Monologues: 3
Irrational Monologues: 4
Irrational Monologues: 5
Irrational Monologues: 6
Is It Natural
Jonathan (samuel (abner) (ibid And His Last Words
Key To The Cow
The Last Supper
The Literati
Local Deity
Look!
Looking At The Moon During Third Moonwalk
Looking Out
Madness Of Chance
Madness: Fullgrown
Making It Go Away
Metaphysical Shock While Watching A Tv Cartoon
Michele Fair
Mommie Swims
Monkey Hill
Nature Poems
Ndaaya
Note To Ezra
Of Heaven: 1
Of Heaven: 2
Of Heaven: 3
Of Heaven: 4
Of Heaven: 5
Of Heaven: 6
Of Nothing
The Old Woman
The Palm Trees Of Las Vegas
Pessimism: The Birds
The Photographs
Playing In The Yard
Poem Following Discussion Of Brain
Poem On Crawling Into Bed: Bitterness
Poems And Marriage
The Proposition
The Rain Of Reason
Rearview
The Scapegoat
Singing Death
The Skyjacker
The Sleep
Slobtime
Snakemarriage
Some Lamb
Song
Songfest
Sonnet
Sonnet
Storming Out
Surviving
Sweetmeat
Tenderness
Testimonial
Texas Suite: 1. Allnight Hamburger Stand In Dangerous
Texas Suite: 2. The Garage
Texas Suite: 3. The Questions
Texas Suite: 4. The Lawn
Texas Suite: 5. The Cherries
Texas Suite: 6. The Actual
Texas Suite: 7. The Flea Market
Texas Suite: 8. The Fishing
Their Share
There It Is
Thunder & Rain
Time In Tool
To The Turns
The Tongue
Trying To Feel It
The Two Dreams
Up Against The Wall
Waiting In The Cafe
Walking With My Son To The Creek In The Dark Which He Fears
What Happened In The Hallway
What Happened When The Milk Came Out
What Is Your Prediction? No One Will Know The Future
Whiteboy
Widows
The Words Once
Wreckage
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 226 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (June 16, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679411453
• ISBN-13: 978-0679411451
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #621,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Chaotic yet, February 2, 2005

By 

Sevni "seven_o_n" (MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Singing Yet: New and Selected Poems (Paperback)

"All life/ has song..." Stan Rice announces at the start of "Singing Yet," chaotic collection of poems from his prior three releases, plus several new poems. Rice (who sadly passed away at the end of 2002) displayed a flair for evocative imagery, but his poetry is so confusingly random that it's almost impossible to decipher.

The first parts of the book are a tangle of bizarre eroticism (comparing melons to a woman) and odd morbidity ("It is death's/drizzle we write/checks on/when we die/we bounce"). But in the "Some Lamb" section, Rice delved into some deeper, more real turf: the death of his daughter from leukemia. "We stopped beside a hole where she/was put by men who could not see."

With an actual focus, Rice's poetry shifts into aching confusion, describing his daughter's illness, death, and burial, all the emotions that came with it. Unfortunately, Rice's poetry doesn't improve after that, including in the stretch of new material at the end of the book -- while his style mellows out a little, Rice's poems are still surreal and still nonsensical. "The iceplants/turn to the sun/their purple/sadist flowers..."

Dreamlike poetry and strange images are not a problem. But Rice's poetry goes beyond strange and into incomprehensible. "Golden silver copper silk/woe is water shocked by milk/heart attack, assassin cancer/who would think these bones such dancers?" he announced at one point. Okay, whatever. Maybe it's about death. Interpret that as you will. While his poetry can be intriguing and seductive, most of the time it just seems like cool phrases tossed randomly together.

Certainly Rice can't be faulted for his lack of description. He could evoke astoundingly weird, Dali-esque images. The problem is, they seem strung together like beads. Rather than focusing on one and exploring it, he seems just to have tossed them together randomly, assuming that they will see profound despite their lack of connection. "Thunder no more, sky/big sandwich gold & coral" -- it doesn't evoke anything by itself, and it seems completely disconnected from what comes after it.

An overview of Stan Rice's poetry, with a stretch of new material, "Singing Yet" doesn't shed any more light on what went through his head. Nor does it make his random poetry any more appealing.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The bitterness and the cynicism.. rivaling even Eliot, April 17, 2000

By 

Angela G. Bevins "Super Geek" (VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Singing Yet: New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)

Stan Rice's sardonic bitterness rivals even that of Eliot's 1922 masterpiece, "The Wasteland." This expansive volume of his work includes numerous examples of the extreme exhaustion and weariness of life that echoes throughout Rice's work. Poems like "Poem on Crawling into Bed: Bitterness" are exemplary of Rice's style, his bitter cynicism and his often-times harsh sarcasm. Also common to Rice's work is a rich imagery of animals, gods, and angels. But he uses these with a twist, and an often cynical one at that. He uses these images in an effort to understand the nature of humanity: where we've come from, where we are, and what we've done wrong. Rice's masterful use of language, metaphor, imagery, and unexpected rhyme make his work a pleasure to read, and his themes are universal ones that demand to be dealt with. Rice attacks these issues head-on with a harsh and bitter sense of consciousness.

5.0 out of 5 stars Singing Yet, December 13, 2011

By 

Thomas Roberdeau (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Singing Yet: New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)

Great, profound poetry of loss. The late Stan Rice was one of America's most brilliant writers.
The sections from SOME LAMB about his daughter's death will shake you.