Full Description
This collection is compiled from the unpublished poems of Karl Shapiro at the University of Texas in Austin and elsewhere. They are largely as Shapiro left them, in a desk drawer in his apartment in uptown Manhattan.
"Proposition"
When we're old lovers, sitting in separate chairs
Silently, will you think our love has faded
Though we smile richly and are still unaided
By doctors, accountants and presumptuous heirs?
Though talk has frozen in geologic layers
Of long alignment of the loved and hated
And even our sexuality is jaded
And we have settled all our private cares
Including death, listen to me, adored,
Words cannot fail us ever, no matter how
The fates brighten their implements to prove
That even gods and geniuses get bored
With marriage, fucking and poetic love,
Because, beloved, we call each other thou.
Contents
Foreword by Robert Phillips vii
LOVE POEMS
The Dinner Party 1
Waiting for Takeoff 2
Moving In 3
Homework 5
Interior 6
German 7
Sea Dance 8
Letter-Poem 9
A Kind of Gift 11
A Thank-You 13
Poems Like Flowers 14
The Meaning 15
"I'll Get Back to You" 16
Spate 17
An Exorcism 18
Archaeology 19
God 20
Proposition 21
Lost and Found 22
The Bestower 23
Total Immersion 24
Torso 25
Torso Fetish 26
The Legs 28
The Walk-Through 29
Talisman 30
No Doubt 31
The Spear 32
Rights 33
ROSE POEMS
Late Bloomer 37
Hothouse Flower 38
Harvest 39
Prepositions 40
Vase of Dead Roses 41
VARIOUS POEMS
The Day That Painting Died 45
The Camera 46
Ballpoint Pens 47
The Sacred Blue 48
Landscape 49
I Declare Peace 50
The Soldier 51
After the Surrender 52
Trajectory 53
Feminist Poem 54
Proverbs 55
The Tenses 56
Second Opinion 57
An Apology to a Bulldog 58
Karl Shapiro 59
Bar Mitzvah 60
The Jewish Problem 62
Again, for Sophie 64
About the Author 67
