Song of the World Becoming: Poems, New and Collected, 1981-2001 [Hardcover]

Pattiann Rogers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2001

This book collects all of Pattiann Rogers’s published work, plus 40 new poems. Her subject matter is at once broad — defining divinity, achieving serenity — and specific, as she sees with a keen eye “the neon needle of a damsel fly hovering and vanishing.” Her poems are complex, multilayered confections ... of detailed, whirling thought.” — Poetry Flash

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Encompassing two decades of poetry and seven previous books of poems, Rogers's latest replaces the new and selected Firekeeper from 1994. Taken one after another, Rogers's poems read like a series of witty but deeply felt naturalist essays, exuding much observational care and descriptive panache: nature's "binding signature contained in the agitation/ of poplars taken by the wind, in the sucker-/ tipped tube feet of the slender purple/ starfish, in the release of midnight's/ cry by root cricket, by poaching owl." For Rogers, our predatory universe testifies to the presence of a God neither benevolent nor condemning the deity just is. Close observation of creation becomes both an act of prayer and an honoring of the world through the poet's own redemptive logos. What is lacking is the negative capability of a Marianne Moore or the more grounded wonder of a James Wright. Rogers simply appropriates nature as divine evidence, lyric proof to sustain her own faith, in a manner similar to Annie Dillard. Some of the poems end up sounding like moral tales for children ("Everybody knows the sun, every/ body in the whole world no matter who"), and the poems that deal overtly with the erotic (most famously "The Hummingbird: A Seduction" and "The Power of Toads") can seem devoid of shadow or experiences rooted in darkness. Rogers would rather celebrate in the light, reveling in the powers of the body and the imagination; like-minded readers will respond. (Mar. 29) Forecast: Rogers has a strong following on the reading circuit and in naturalist circles. Yet the appearance of this collected, a relatively scant seven years after the selected Firekeeper, won't be enough to generate the sort of national reviews it seems designed to provoke.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Rogers has released her new collection as part of a collected works spanning the last two decades, and readers who have not yet discovered this wise and complex poet should sit up and take notice. Like many of her colleagues Albert Goldbarth, Diane Ackerman, and the late A.R. Ammons come to mind Rogers can't forget that matters of the heart are rooted in hard science: "Think of those old, enduring connections/ found in all flesh? the channeling/ wires and threads, vacuoles, granules,/ plasma and pods, purple veins? those common ligaments,/ filaments, fibers and canals." While her poems have been called "erotic," Rogers' hunger for the physical world she is unsentimental in her attempts to catalog every nook and cranny is inseparable from an unabashed faith: "God is a process, a raveled nexus/ forever tangling into and around the changing form of his own moment." Her poems are apt to generate electricity in the incongruous leap from the knowledge of life's underpinnings to the miracle of existence. One terrific poem, "The Art of Raising Gibbons and Flowers," evokes the simultaneous beauty and horror of our civilized selves in a still life of hothouse flowers and caged primates in which "even pollen spores and feeding butterflies/ are shaken loose by the fetid blast." This fertile work is essential for poetry collections. Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine LLP Law Lib., New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 550 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions; 1st edition (March 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157131413X
• ISBN-13: 978-1571314130
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #456,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Outstanding Collection, January 6, 2002

By 

Morten Lauridsen (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Song of the World Becoming: Poems, New and Collected, 1981-2001 (Hardcover)

Rogers is clearly amongst the very finest contemporary American poets. A superb, beautifully written collection containing such poetic gems as "The Hummingbird: A Seduction". A treasured book in my poetry library by a gifted, important writer.

Morten Lauridsen, Composer

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Praise for Song of the World Becoming, August 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Song of the World Becoming: Poems, New and Collected, 1981-2001 (Hardcover)

Book Magazine, July/August 2001: "Rogers offers a deeply satisfying, sometimes shocking reading experience, yielding a wonderful mixture that echoes Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, D.H. Lawrence and Walt Whitman. Yet Rogers' is a distinctive, fresh voice. She deserves a wider readership, and we are in debt to her publisher for this fine book."

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonder and Awe, December 30, 2007

By 

H. M. Berman "Poetry Lover" (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Song of the World Becoming: Poems, New and Collected, 1981-2001 (Hardcover)

Song of the World Becoming is a treasure trove of wonder and awe. Rogers's poems are complex, musical, spiritual yet down-to-earth with telling detail of the abounding physical world. Her poems achieve their beauty with suprising twists of language and thought. The title poem alone is worth the price of admission.