Stained Glass: Poems [Hardcover]

Rosanna Warren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1993

Rosanna Warren's first collection of poetry, Each Leaf Shines Separate, announced the emergence of a fresh voice in contemporary American poetry and earned praise from John Hollander, Richard Eberhart, and Mark Strand. Now, in her second book, Rosanna Warren has fulfilled her promise. In Stained Glass she continues to examine, as John Hollander said of her first book, "the relation of art to nature, exploring the ultimate naturalness of the world of picture, and reading tenderly and shrewdly the forms of fable in which reality presents itself to the passionate gaze." Yet in this volume the poems are more personal and intimate - they possess an emotional depth that extends the earlier work. Stained Glass is a book of mourning. It begins with an echo of Milton's Lycidas and concludes with an evocation of Iliad XXIV; in its course it touches on many scenes of loss, personal and impersonal. In the voice of an Eskimo mother, in a Parisian market scene, in brilliant translations of poems by Max Jacob and Pierre Reverdy, to the more intimate elegies, the human drama unfolds within the larger rhythms of the natural landscape. In poems that are classical and eloquent, ranging from sonnets and rhymed quatrains to highly flexible free verse, Warren vividly probes the savagery of aging, the corruption of the human body and human estrangement from the divine, evoking as well scenes of simple tenderness and beauty. This year's recipient of an Ingram Merrill grant and the Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets that honors a poet of exceptional merit under the age of forty, Rosanna Warren is clearly one of the most gifted poets of her generation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Warren's ( Each Leaf Shines Separate ) second book covers a broad formal range, though a rather narrow emotional one. The most powerful material is personal, like the work of mourning in "From New Hampshire," in which the poet imagines an absent, familiar figure--"I think you have taken a long late evening walk / Your heavy shoes glisten with dew / I hear your footsteps pause on the dirt road / and I know you are picking out / the dark mass of the sleeping mountain from the dark / mass of night and testing the heaviness of each." However, her many poems triggered by literature, photographs or historical figures are distanced, not experienced. For example, "Child Model," about a picture of an Eskimo child mummy, and "The Cost," about a baby found in a trash can ("The cost of empire is great and disturbing / the secret knowledge of philosophy") achieve sympathy, not empathy. As Warren writes in a memorable line, "It is not distance / we're after, but clarity." Her technical abilities join with an emotional tautness in "The Cormorant": ". . . ocean, old blowhard, wheezing in the give / and take, gulls grieving the battered shore. / It is your death I can't believe, / last night, inland, away from us, beyond/these drawling compensations of the moon."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

While undeniably skillful, Warren's emotionally and linguistically condensed poems are best taken in small doses. Passages like "Pansy/ freaked with jet be/ damned: it take radiant bitterness to stand, to take the throb of sky" immediately catch the eye and the imagination, but poring over poem after densely layered poem can be exhausting. Warren ( Each Leaf Shines Separate , LJ 11/15/84) is often at her best when she works against her instinct for richly slathered images and lets her poems breathe a little: "the little we know of St. Eustache/ becomes him: how this Roman (third century A.D.) general/ while hunting beheld/ a crucifix/ in a stag's antlers/ and instantly converted/ how broiled in a bull, his cries/ converted/to music" runs one lovely example. Recommended for solid poetry collections.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 68 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (May 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393034860
• ISBN-13: 978-0393034868
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,804,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars talented and studied, but incomplete, October 2, 2004

By 

reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stained Glass (Warren) (Paperback)

I have read each of Rosanna Penn Warren's books of poetry. I can say that she has a gift, but unfortunately, that comes through with glimpses, that she allows in poems, which I actually do remember for long periods of time. There are poems that I remember, but much is overshadowed by the bookishness of many poems, in which, her visions are not brought to completion in my eyes. I do not mean bookish words, but obscure bookish stories in other languages, that are not on these pages. Truly, I do believe that Rosanna Penn Warren could be a great poet, as she does have an exquisite handle on her language and subject at times.