Night Music: Poems
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Book Overview
Selected by Peter Davison with an introduction by Edward Hirsch. Sissman was a true phenomenon in American poetry. He published his first book, a collection of antic, autobiographical episodes in blank verse, in 1968. Eight years and three books later, he died of Hodgkin's disease at the age of forty-eight. Of Sissman's remarkable final poems John Updike wrote, "What other poet had ever given such wry and unblinking witness to his own dying? His poetry gave back to life more generously than he had received, and carried his beautiful wit into darkness undimmed." Now Sissman's longtime editor, Peter Davison, has selected from his lifework the essential poems--the essence of an American original. (A Mariner Original)
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0395925703
ISBN13:9780395925706
Release Date:February 1999
Publisher:Houghton Mifflin
Length:160 Pages
Weight:0.60 lbs.
Dimensions:0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Where has this poet been all my life?
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 25 years ago
I'd never heard of the late L.E. Sissman till I went to a reading of poems from this book at Harvard. Peter Davison and John Updike reminisced about him and read his wonderful story-poems with zest and humor and real tenderness. Was there ever a poet who wrote about his youth with more manic joy, or about his own dying (from Hodgkin's disease) with more unblinking frankness? I doubt it, and I doubt that there is another poet of his generation (the sixties) who wrote with such immediate accessability--he's a poet every American dog or cat can understand and enjoy. What a find! Thank you Mr. Davison for bringing him back into print.
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