Words for My Daughter

by John Balaban

Overview

A National Poetry Series title, selected by W.S. Merwin. "These stunning and courageous poems haunt us with their compassion. Balaban is the master of juxtapositions. As the landscape of a ravaged Vietnam melts into the American Southwest we are reminded that there are no national boundaries to the human spirit."--Maxine Kumin

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556590375
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	01/01/1991
Series:	National Poetry Series
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

John Balaban is the author of a dozen books of poetry, prose, and Vietnamese translations whose prizes include the Lamont Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and two National Book Award nominations. His work has been featured on NPR's "Fresh Air," New York Times, and Utne Reader. He teaches at North Carolina State University.

Editorial Reviews

For Balaban (Lamont Award-winner After Our War ), the so-called civilized world is a place where wars rage, where nuclear annihilation is a persistent threat, where people lose loved ones and live lives of all-consuming sorrow. Although the poet is tied to this world by job and family, his desire for a simpler, more innocent existence leads him, time and again, to the ``Garden,'' as symbolized in this superior collection by the gorgeous landscape of the American Southwest. In ``Walking down into Cebolla Canyon,'' the poet receives what he sees as a beatific blessing from the ``vast rubble'' before him: ``everything it says is true.'' The poet has been hearing nature's voice since childhood, often heeding its call by ``wandering off alone on highways,'' walking through valleys and fields, looking ``to sing / with katydids chattering in murky trees.'' Balaban likens nature's song to poetry and sees the poet as a guide showing readers the way to ``the stairway of surprise,'' where they are able to perceive the planet's beauty as angels do. Balaban's language is lyrical and lovely, lifting us beyond the morass of our complicated lives, instilling in our hearts the hope of an exalted existence here on earth. This was selected for the National Poetry Series by W. S. Merwin. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This graceful book by a Lamont winner ( After Our War , LJ 5/15/74) is a powerful testimony to hope. A conscientious objector who worked with war-injured children in Vietnam, Balaban writes now for his own child: ``This is what Daddy was doing/ the August you were born./ Wandering off alone on highways/ walking off highways into the night/ calming a loud head with the past/ listening to things that make a song.'' A ``hunger for words pure as clear water'' inspires Balaban to make his own music--accessible poems in common speech--and also to find solace in nature and the ways words and nature can work together to heal: ``I bring you the water's benediction/ love like water makes the canyons bloom.'' Recommended.--Kathleen Norris, Lemmon P.L., S.D.

Library Journal

For in that realm of scorpion and snakeep his soul cried out and the woman cameep fashioned from light and veiled in rain.ep He followed a god through desert wastes.ep From "Peyote Villanelle". Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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