Toward the Distant Islands: New and Selected Poems (Paperback)

by Hayden Carruth (Author), Sam Hamill (Introduction)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Carruth's long and protean career includes his editing of The Voice That Is Great Within Us (1970), a still-standard anthology of American modernism; a high-profile stint as editor of Poetry magazine; and periods of rural seclusion. His 24 books encompass Frostian tales of farm life with New England eccentrics, compilations of haiku, long and unguarded poems of erotic devotion, autobiographical laments, and sensitive odes to jazz greats who understood that "Freedom and discipline occur/ only in ecstasy, all else// is shoveling out the muck." All sides of Carruth's oeuvre find a place in this welcome volume, dexterously compiled and introduced by Copper Canyon founder Sam Hamill. Where Carruth's individual books—even the strongest, such as the National Book Award–winning Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey (1996)—could become garrulous or repetitive, the selection here gives just enough of everything Carruth has learned, and he has learned a lot, especially about the ways and landscapes of New England. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
Deciding to present only complete poems and thus leave the contents of Carruth's Collected Longer Poems (1994) unplumbed, editor Hamill chose poems he hoped would spur readers on to the rest of the old master's writing. He certainly has corralled the preponderance of Carruth's most memorable work: poems of natural analysis, such as the radiant "The Loon on Forester's Pond"; his distinctive haiku, which replace Zen imagery with Western observation; his loose-blank-verse portraits of Vermont neighbors, especially "John Dryden"; that great, humanist antiwar poem, "On Being Asked to Write a Poem against the War in Vietnam"; "Essay," about the prevalence of dead and dying animals in modern American poetry; his long-lined philosophical poems, more Jeffersian than Whitmanian; his long, elegiac verse letter in memory of his daughter, "Dearest M--the First Day of Her Death." If such riches rather upstage the 35 pages of recent poems that follow them, well, how could they not? Anyway, Carruth's present crusty-but-lusty-old-geezer persona is far from unrewarding; don't miss the concluding "A Few Dilapidated Arias." Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (April 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556592361
• ISBN-13: 978-1556592362
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #685,671 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lyric Journey, October 10, 2006

By	Zinta Aistars "Writer & Editor" (Portage, MI United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Over many years of reading poetry, I've come to trust that any poetry book published by Copper Canyon Press is going to be an adventure. This collection , hand-picked by Press founder, Sam Hill, is no exception. I'd read enough of Hayden Carruth's work that I expected to be impressed, and I was.

The poems are selected from 12 previous collections (oh, if all of us poets could boast of so many published books!) with an addition of new poems at finish to keep the appetite whetted for more yet to come. It is interesting to watch for change and growth in the whole of Carruth's work, but that his talent was richly showing early on - the first batch selected dates back to 1959's "The Crow and the Heart" - is clear:

Of all disquiets sorrow is most serene.
Its interval of soft humility
Are lenient; they intrude on our obscene
Debasements and our fury like a plea
For wisdom...

Sorrow can shape us better than dismay.

Carruth understands the peaks and valleys of a man's life. As Sam Hill notes in his introduction, this is a poet who has struggled with angels and demons alike, finding both in himself. So his work reflects such struggles, and we swing upwards with him to whisper with angels, just as we slide into shadows with him, to weep and gnash teeth with dark demons. If a poet creates often from the grit inside him, as an oyster its pearl, then this poet proves the old axiom. We must know the demon to recognize the angel; we must strive to be angelic to fully understand the power of the demonic.

Carruth writes glorious love poems to his wife, filled with appetite and relish and adoration. He writes love poems to his daughter, lost too early to cancer. He writes love poems to the natural world around him, and to the characters that are found in humanity. He writes love poems to sorrow.

This is a poet who lives his life seam to seam, depth to height, and journals it into his lyric work. To share in his journey, this is a collection not to be missed.