Alone and Not Alone
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Following Pulitzer Prize finalist Ron Padgett's 2013's Collected Poems (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the William Carlos Williams Prize) Alone and Not Alone offers new poems that see the world in a clear and generous light.
From "The World of Us":
Don't go around all day
thinking about life—
doing so will raise a barrier
between you and its instants.
You need those instants
so you can be in them,
and I need you to be in them with me
for I think the world of us
and the mysterious barricades
that make it possible.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Can a prolific poet produce a breakthrough book after age 70? Padgett might have done it here: the casual, almost diffident, jazz-influenced New York School poet, whose Collected Poems won the L.A. Times Book Prize in 2013, follows up with a volume whose charm, ease, and humor should please casual readers unfamiliar with his previous work as well as fans who have enjoyed him for decades. "Reality has a transparent veneer," he quips, "that looks exactly like the veneer beneath it"; Padgett's clear, even faux-naive poems sometimes imitate ballads and nursery rhymes, or else veer into sweetly bizarre anecdotes in prose. He pays attention to how children think and to what grown-ups can learn from them the collection is dedicated to his son, Wayne, and features poems about his grandson, Marcello. Zhuangzi's butterfly, self-propelled lawn furniture, "the Step Theory of Reality/ and its by-product the Ziggurat Configuration" all pop out of poems that connect the poet to the world he enjoys. "Don't go around all day/ thinking about life," Padgett advises; "doing so will raise a barrier/ between you and its instants./ You need those instants," he continues "and I need you to be in them with me." A poet who can say that after decades of work deserves many admirers.
