From the beloved creator of A Prairie Home Companion, a timely, thoughtful collection of poems that provide solace and wisdomWhen Garrison Keillor published Good Poems, he touched a chord in readers across America. The anthology of poems he selected for their "wit, their simplicity, their passion, and their utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with" inspired thousands to buy what was for many their first book of poetry.Now, in Good Poems for Hard Times, Keillor has pondered over the archives of his beloved Writer's Almanac radio show to select a batch of consoling, rousing, and truthful poems guaranteed to raise flagging spirits or to inspire those in need of a dose of wisdom or honesty. But these poems are not about suffering. They're intended to reach us and stricken friends by holding out a picture of the grace of ordinary life. Above all, this eclectic anthology, including works from Raymond Carver, Emily Dickinson, Charles Simic, Billy Collins, Robert Frost, Kenneth Rexroth, and many more, fit Keillor's definition of "good": memorable, beautifully worded, and accessible. They're not highbrow. They're not stuffy. But when hard times send us skidding into the meridian, the poems collected here are what we need them to be: just plain good.
Book Details
Format
paperback
ISBN-10
0143037676
ISBN-13
9780143037675
Publication Date
Aug 2006
Item Weight
1.00 pounds
Length
10.00 inch
Width
6.00 inch
Height
1.00 inch
First Sentence
He turns the light on, lights the cigarette, goes out on the porch, chainsaws a block of green wood down the grain, chucks the pieces into the box stove, pours in kerosene, tosses in the match he has set fire to the next cigarette with, stands back while the creosote-lined, sheet-metal rust-lengths shudder but just barely manage to direct the cawhoosb in the stove which sucks in ash motes through gaps at the bottom and glares out fire blaze through overburn-cracks at the top all the way to the roof and up out through into the still starry sky starting to lighten, sits down to a bowl of crackers and bluish milk in which reflections of a 40-watt ceiling bulb appear and disappear, eats, contemplates an atmosphere containing kerosene stink, chainsaw smoke, cha nsmoke, wood smoke, wood heat, gleams of the 40-watt ceiling bulb bobbing in blue milk.
