Toward the Distant Islands: New and Selected Poems

By Hayden Carruth

Book Overview

This "portable Carruth" gathers the essential poems from a major American poet. Toward the Distant Islands presents lyrics, short and long narratives, comic, meditative, erotic poems, and reflections on the natural world. Ever engaged with radical politics, rural poverty, and the poet's cultural responsibility, Carruth's work is alive with a rare courage and clear-eyed conviction. Over his prolific and celebrated writing career, Hayden Carruth has been one of the most rigorous and inventive technicians of a generation that has been acknowledged for its brilliance and variety. Like the jazz he so loves, his poetry ranges from the formal to the spontaneous, from local speech to righteous oratory, from sublime complexity to elegant understatement. This volume features an introduction by Carruth's longtime friend and editor, Sam Hamill.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556592361
• ISBN13: 9781556592362
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Length: 150 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Lyric Journey

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.