Toward the distant islands New & selected poems

Review by Booklist Review

Deciding to present only complete poems and thus leave the contents of Carruth's Collected Longer Poems0 (1994) unplumbed, editor Hamill chose poems he hoped would spur readers on to the rest of the old master's writing. He certainly has corralled the preponderance of Carruth's most memorable work: poems of natural analysis, such as the radiant "The Loon on Forester's Pond"; his distinctive haiku, which replace Zen imagery with Western observation; his loose-blank-verse portraits of Vermont neighbors, especially "John Dryden"; that great, humanist antiwar poem, "On Being Asked to Write a Poem against the War in Vietnam"; "Essay," about the prevalence of dead and dying animals in modern American poetry; his long-lined philosophical poems, more Jeffersian than Whitmanian; his long, elegiac verse letter in memory of his daughter, "Dearest M--the First Day of Her Death." If such riches rather upstage the 35 pages of recent poems that follow them, well, how could they not? Anyway, Carruth's present crusty-but-lusty-old-geezer persona is far from unrewarding; don't miss the concluding "A Few Dilapidated Arias." --Ray Olson Copyright 2006 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Carruth's long and protean career includes his editing of The Voice That Is Great Within Us (1970), a still-standard anthology of American modernism; a high-profile stint as editor of Poetry magazine; and periods of rural seclusion. His 24 books encompass Frostian tales of farm life with New England eccentrics, compilations of haiku, long and unguarded poems of erotic devotion, autobiographical laments, and sensitive odes to jazz greats who understood that "Freedom and discipline occur/ only in ecstasy, all else// is shoveling out the muck." All sides of Carruth's oeuvre find a place in this welcome volume, dexterously compiled and introduced by Copper Canyon founder Sam Hamill. Where Carruth's individual books-even the strongest, such as the National Book Award-winning Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey (1996)-could become garrulous or repetitive, the selection here gives just enough of everything Carruth has learned, and he has learned a lot, especially about the ways and landscapes of New England. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

In compiling this selection from more than a half-century of work, Copper Canyon aims to provide both an introduction for the uninitiated and a kind of "portable Carruth"-no small challenge given Carruth's longevity and his rich, prolific output. Complicating the task further are Carruth's often opposing impulses-classical vs. experimental, lyrical vs. polemical, rustic vs. urbane. Though long works are excluded (e.g., The Sleeping Beauty), readers will find essential pieces, such as "The Cows at Night," "Emergency Haying," and others culled from a dozen published collections alongside 15 new poems written since 2001's Doctor Jazz. "Cutting Wheat by Moonlight" can stand among Carruth's finest lyrics, and "Complaint and Petition" shows that the poet remains politically rebellious at age 85 ("I don't know your exalted language of power./ I'm thankful for that"). An existentialist in search of value in the face of an impassive, perhaps godless universe, Carruth professes "faith in the miracle of the possible, faith in the peaceful knowledge of what is true." Recommended for all poetry collections.-Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---