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From the old-world schools of Jamaica, to the battlefields of France, to the schizophrenic world of New York publishing and American Academia, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louis Simpson tells his own story as only a master poet can. Simpson is also the recipient of the Columbia Medal for Excellence and Guggenheim fellowships. 12 black-and-white photos. ... Read more

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A skillfully-told ancient Irish tale
This riveting story is based on one of the oldest extant narratives from Ireland (recorded in Leabhar na hUuidre -- The Book of the Dun Cow). The author has rearranged the traditional sequence of events so that they correspond to the actual geography of Ireland and its islands and has perhaps restored the tale to something close to its original form.Her use of language is spectacular, in particular her vivid description of Mael Duin's madness.Essentially, the story follows a young man as he discovers his origins, finds his insane mother, learns that he must avenge his dead father, and sets out to fulfill that goal.The story moves seamlessly between the plausible and the mythic, firmly rooted in human emotions with which the modern reader can identify but keeping a foot in the Otherworld as well.Allow time to read this book in one intense sitting -- you won't be able to do anything else ... Read more

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Few poets have so artfully confronted American life as Louis Simpson. Persona speakers struggle with everyday issues against a backdrop of larger forces, the individual’s maladjustment to a culture of materialism and brutal competition, the failure of marriage under the pressures of such a society, the failure of the American dream. Simpson wages a lover’s quarrel with the world.

"Louis Simpson has perfect pitch. His poems win us first by their drama, their ways of voicing our ways . . . of making do with our lives. Then his intelligence cajoles us to the brink of a cliff of solitude and we step over into the buoyant element of true poetry."—Seamus Heaney

Educated at Munro College (West Indies) and at Columbia University, Louis Simpson has taught widely, most recently at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of seventeen books of poetry and ten works of prose. He has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poetry, the Hudson Review, the Guggenheim Foundation, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Customer Reviews (5)

a modern classic
I had read a few books by L. Simpson and I considered him a very good poet, but this collection of his work confirms he is a modern classic. One of the best poets of the century.

Simpson helps us focus on the particular
Louis Simpson's poems are a gift to the reader and a guide to help one focus on each moment with great clarity and insight.In an earlier collection of poems he writes:

"In recent years I have written about occurrences, sometimes very ordinary ones, in which there is a meaning hidden beneath the surface.Bringing out such meanings, it seems to me, is a road poetry can take in a world that, as it grows more industrial, seems less beautiful in the old sense.The more banal and 'anti-poetic' the material, the more there is for the poet to do.For this work a sense of humor is as necessary as an awareness of the drama, terror and beauty of life."

We so often live "unpoetic" lives, but Simpson helps us find the poetry that is there, if we have eyes to see it.

Here is the last stanza of "The Foggy Lane"

Walking in the foggy lane
I try to keep my attention fixed
on the uneven, muddy surface . . .
the pools made by the rain,
and wheel ruts, and wet leaves,
and the rustling of small animals

This poet was diasporic, wry, and mongrel when he jumped out
from the womb of Jamaica into the tomb of Wheeler Hall but he kept on writing, and thinking in writing, and deforming the narrative poem into a wry little lyric full of pithy sense and twisted ironice morals.I have loved his work a along time, and the man is part of the whole thing, what Wallace Stevens praised as "The Whole Man" composed of his time and climate and place, and nation-language which by now is not the Caribbean but Bush II America.I would honor him with a Pulitizer Prize if I could,this lyric machine still writing at 80, still the same imagistic wit and focus.The Hawaii poems are pretty interestingk even when they are remote, sarcastic, and tourist-sardonic like some haole moon peaking out over Kaimana Beach. But yes I agree that "Particularly now, when experimental schools such as the Language group command critical attention, his poetry can seem old-fashioned. It might best be considered as a model of academic poetry today" as Ivan Arguelles put it in 1988 for the Univ. of California at Berkeley Library.Yes, it is godawfully "old fashioned," and brilliant and animating by turns, twisted like Thomas Hardy and Noel Coward in one:Maybe, "By 50, he understood the Way of Heaven" as Confucius said long ago and far away.Praise him...he keeps writing in his own way & time.

The Owner of the House
Louis Simpson is an American treasure.His poetry is honest, yet
mysterious - plain-spoken, yet artful.This collection offers not only those poems which have long garnered him our highest accolades, but also new poems which reveal an owner of the house who is very much at home.What a rare invitation this collection is - an open door to an open heart!A large heart.
An expansive mind. A rare talent.

The Owner of the House by Louis Simpson
This work contains many themes about life, pogroms, immigrants,
the homeless and occasionally theology. Here are some samples.

"To the north (Mauka)
a mass of rosy clouds
two slopes of a mountain
sprinkled with garden lights. (Kaimana Beach)

or

"Beside a Church we dug our holes,
By tombstone and by cross
They were too shallow for our souls
When the ground began to toss. "

The readings make for an entertaining session. This poetry
is light-hearted but it is not elegant in the style of
an Evangeline or Edgar Allen Poe work. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Simpson's ideas about the nature of poetry and critiques of his contemporaries
... Read more

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“The development of my poetry has been and is the development of an encounter with an idea about God,” the great Spanish poet and Nobel Prize winner Juan Ramón Jiménez wrote several years before his death. An early twentieth-century pioneer in the use of free verse, Jiménez has always expressed himself through mystery and profundity. The author presents a fervent landscape of primordial imagery in an attempt to restore mystical poetry to its rightful place in literature and art.

For anyone not familiar with the writings of this modern master, these austere and radiant poems, translated by the poet and scholar Antonio de Nicolás and presented alongside the original Spanish, will demonstrate why Jiménez is considered one of the masters of twentieth-century poetry.

“To what may this writing be compared? Whitman's 'Song of Myself' comes to mind, but it is not with any intention of taking away from Whitman's achievement that I declare a preference for the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez ...” —Louis Simpson, from the Introduction ... Read more

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Louis Simpson's translation of Francois Villon's The Legacy & The Testament has achieved the impossible, as Simpson has created the definitive translation of the life work of France's greatest poet of the 15th century. Abandoned by his parents at an early age and raised by a foster father, later imprisoned, chained and tortured, somehow Villon survived to write one of the most enduring epics ever.

Louis Simpson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, is the author of several books of poetry and criticism. He has received a number of prestigious awards throughout his career, including the Prix de Rome, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Columbia Medal for Excellence. Louis Simpson lives in Setauket, New York. ... Read more

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WOW!
Wow! This is one marvelous work by a Pulitzer Prize winner and famed French translator. Simpson has translated Francois Villon's epis masterpiece. Villon is generally considered to be one of France's greatest poets and this work has been described as "one of the most enduring epics ever." This bilingual edition means, of course, that you get the benefit of both the French and English translation side by side. This belongs on the book shelf of any discerning reader, regardless of whether you like poetry or not. This is quality work both by the translator and the Story Line Press. ... Read more

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Simpson writes of the need for a true connection between poetry and how lives are lived
... Read more

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Great dialogues on poetry
There's a ton of books of poetry, but not very many accesible ones about the nature of it or poets in general.This book fulfills on all levels in this respect.By pointing out clear, quoted examples of the good, the bad and the pretentious - all in a way that anyone could understand - this book makes you want to run out and write one of your own.

An excellent reference book of poetic thought, and not overly long. ... Read more