Urban Stampede and Other Poems - Softcover

F.D. Reeve (author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0870135945 ISBN 13: 9780870135941

Publisher: Michigan State University Press, 2002

Synopsis

This new collection of poems by F.D. Reeve includes "The Urban Stampede", a dramatic narrative in poetic form, and twenty-four lyric poems. "The Urban Stampede" is a retelling of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth. It is the third such narrative from Reeve, as he attempts to rehouse grand myths from fallen cultures into the consciousness of today, seeking to show the enduring power of language itself and to bring spectator, poet, and performer together in the same place. These narratives include spoken voice and singing and are shaped by a careful underlying distancing—the basic characteristic of narrative poetry. In this way, a well-known story is coolly evaluated for cultural change and linguistic difference. In both the long poem, which is the centerpiece of this collection, and in the shorter poems, Reeve takes risks in order to explore the meaning that poetry gives to life-an immediately apprehensible vision apt in size and shape to our idea of the world, one in which the language of hands speaks to a guiding practical faith and the language of the mind leads to understanding and delight.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Philadelphia but brought up outside New York City, a devoted pupil of the poet-critic R.P. Blackmur, and now himself a poet-critic retired from Wesleyan University and living in Vermont, F. D. (Frank) Reeve has long been regarded to quote Robert Giroux as "one of America's most gifted and individual poets." He first visited Russia as an exchange scholar with the Academy of Sciences the year before his famous trip with Robert Frost. Recently, he has made his sassy alter ego, the Blue Cat, an outspoken prowler for justice. Reeve's numerous translations from Russian were honored in 2007 when he was invited to Moscow to give the keynote address at the International Conference of Translators of Russian Literature. His dozen books of poetry, his novels, and his short stories about his work on the New York docks have won him an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Golden Rose of the New England Poetry Club, and a LittD. from New England College.

Synopsis

This new collection of poems by F.D. Reeve includes "The Urban Stampede", a dramatic narrative in poetic form, and twenty-four lyric poems. These narratives include spoken voice and singing and are shaped by a careful underlying distancing - the basic characteristic of narrative poetry. In this way, a well-known story is coolly evaluated for cultural change and linguistic difference. In both the long poem, which is the centrepiece of this collection, and in the shorter poems, Reeve takes risks in order to explore the meaning that poetry gives to life - an immediately apprehensible vision apt in size and shape to our idea of the world, one in which the language of hands speaks to a guiding practical faith and the language of the mind leads to understanding and delight.

Edition details

• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0870135945
• ISBN 13: 9780870135941
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 67