Gerald Stern Books

Gerald Stern just sweeps me away into his own world when I open to any page of this wonderful collection of poetry in "This Time; New and Selected Poems". If his work is new to you or you are a returning fan you will be profoundly rewarded by his powerful and haunting writing that takes you from his backyard then out everywhere into his great, wide world. His language ranges from the mystical to the perfectly frank whether set in the convoluted world of man or in the sacred space of his garden. He reaches inward and outward, he digs, he towers then reclines. He Shines!
Mr. Stern is richly deserving of all of the rewards he has received and so much more. A great American voice!

Gerald Stern's book of poems demonstrates it IS his time. The selected poems cover Stern's past up to present, suspending images and thought, passing a range of emotions that then rise from within the reader. I have read and continue to re-read this collection, hear G.S.'s matter-of-fact voice lifting from pages, see his impressions as clearly as if I were seeing them with my own eyes. This is a book I take along on trips or vacations or sudden moves. If you know Gerald Stern, you'll love THIS TIME; if you don't know Stern, you'll love him before finishing only five of his poems. Lovely, lovely... and thought provoking.

Gerald Stern is a renowned Pennsylvania author having received the following awards: Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Lamont Poetry Prize, grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the best poem award from the American Poetry Review in 1996, and a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. His works are symbolistic, and to truly understand a poem, one may have to read it at least three times. Titles such as "Orange Roses," "I Remember Galileo," "The Unity," "Your Animal," "Shad," "Eggshell," "All I Have Are the Tracks," "A Song for the Romeos," and "Silver Hand" are just a few of this extensive aggregation that mystifies and creates a sensational experience for the mind. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is searching for true poetry, poetry that touches the heart, poetry that creates an impact on the way you look at the world around you.

Reading a Gerald Stern poem is hitching a ride on a boomerang built with words. One is going to be taken on an exhilarating emotional ride through space and then returned gently to earth not quite the same person. Many compare Stern to Whitman because of his humanity which makes his work accessible and memorable. He is a magician who turns the mundane into magnificence by writing with his whole being. A master poet who doesn't tell about experiences, rather, he shares them with his readers. Keep this book by the bedtable and dream along with these poems.

As a former student of Dr Sterns (way back in the 70's) this book brings back many of my own memories. As Dr. Stern grew up in the coal fields of Pa, the references strike me very deeply as I remember the same things he is writing about. His humor continues to be jacketed in serious thoughts, but just as in class, his brillance shines thur.

This book, from my understanding, is Mr. Stern's first book after his New and Selected Poems, which won the American Book Award. He is an American Master! My wife, who studied under him at the University of Iowa, has been a die-hard fan all her adlut life. Mr. Stern's tough look at the world and soft touch to the heart has won me, a scientist who believes not all things can me explained, over too.

I have always been impressed with poets who are not only good and prolific at what they do, but also attempt a greater project--an idea of more significant proportions than can be encompassed in a single poem, or even in a small group of poems; one that perhaps requires and entire volume of poetry to fulfill, and a lifetime of writing to reach and understand. Many poets have strived beyond the limits of simple poetry--beyond the possibilities of a single poem, or even a body of poems--to create a poetry that is fundamentally important; that is more deeply searching and interrogating than is asked, or even expected, of a fine or prodigious poet. Such poets have a project, whether discreet and subtle, or thunderingly apparent. In the twentieth century, we may look at Ezra Pound's "Cantos" as an example, or John Berryman's "Dream Songs" an another, and perhaps more ambitiously, Charles Olson's "Maximus Poems", as examples.

With his first major publication, "Lucky Life", Gerald Stern was beginning on a course of intense exploration, and interrogation, of the Self caste into the world. Perhaps it is Gerald Stern's project to create a poetry with a new language of feeling and thinking, and which gives new meaning to the language we already possess. His poems, while filled with a language of grief and sadness, also point to the inevitable possibility of joy and hope within human experience. In one line, Stern's poetry permits the expression of both total loss and complete redemption, almost simultaneously. His poetry is complex, but direct, never confusing the issues at stake in the poem. The personae he uses in his poems are not of key issue--nor is the Self of the poet--but rather, the larger issues which they point to. When present in a poem, Stern uses himself almost as a launching pad into the world around him.

There are many gods in Stern's poetry; gods who often caste long shadows over the characters that people Stern's poems. Yet, in the midst of crisis, Stern's characters seem to find a way out from under the shadow, and embrace the pure luck of being alive in the first place. Stern's recognizable voice unites the poems in every book from "Lucky Life" to 1997's "This Time", his collection of new and selected poems. Stern's project is one of modern humanism, an attempt to recover the self from often senseless damage of the world, while at the same reveling, wide-eyed, in all its beauty and magic. His poetry presents a formadible belief in the ability of human beings to cleanse themselves, and all the lovely possibilities for redemption and reconciliation. With "Lucky Life", Stern began a new poetry with a contemporary consciousness. His humanism does not deny God, anyone of them--though his, the poet's, is the God of the Jews--but permits a remarkable search for faith and God in all the wonders of humanity, both terrible and beautiful. Of course, there is often failure, but sometimes we get lucky

I have always been impressed with poets who are not only good and prolific at what they do, but also attempt a greater project--an idea of more significant proportions than can be encompassed in a single poem, or even in a small group of poems; one that perhaps requires and entire volume of poetry to fulfill, and a lifetime of writing to reach and understand. Many poets have strived beyond the limits of simple poetry--beyond the possibilities of a single poem, or even a body of poems--to create a poetry that is fundamentally important; that is more deeply searching and interrogating than is asked, or even expected, of a fine or prodigious poet. Such poets have a project, whether discreet and subtle, or thunderingly apparent. In the twentieth century, we may look at Ezra Pound's "Cantos" as an example, or John Berryman's "Dream Songs" an another, and perhaps more ambitiously, Charles Olson's "Maximus Poems", as examples.

With his first major publication, "Lucky Life", Gerald Stern was beginning on a course of intense exploration, and interrogation, of the Self caste into the world. Perhaps it is Gerald Stern's project to create a poetry with a new language of feeling and thinking, and which gives new meaning to the language we already possess. His poems, while filled with a language of grief and sadness, also point to the inevitable possibility of joy and hope within human experience. In one line, Stern's poetry permits the expression of both total loss and complete redemption, almost simultaneously. His poetry is complex, but direct, never confusing the issues at stake in the poem. The personae he uses in his poems are not of key issue--nor is the Self of the poet--but rather, the larger issues which they point to. When present in a poem, Stern uses himself almost as a launching pad into the world around him.

There are many gods in Stern's poetry; gods who often caste long shadows over the characters that people Stern's poems. Yet, in the midst of crisis, Stern's characters seem to find a way out from under the shadow, and embrace the pure luck of being alive in the first place. Stern's recognizable voice unites the poems in every book from "Lucky Life" to 1997's "This Time", his collection of new and selected poems. Stern's project is one of modern humanism, an attempt to recover the self from often senseless damage of the world, while at the same reveling, wide-eyed, in all its beauty and magic. His poetry presents a formadible belief in the ability of human beings to cleanse themselves, and all the lovely possibilities for redemption and reconciliation. With "Lucky Life", Stern began a new poetry with a contemporary consciousness. His humanism does not deny God, anyone of them--though his, the poet's, is the God of the Jews--but permits a remarkable search for faith and God in all the wonders of humanity, both terrible and beautiful. Of course, there is often failure, but sometimes we get lucky

This is a wonderful collection of poetry that would be ideal for someone wanting to sample poetry or perhaps give as a gift. There is something in the 300 plus poems by 94 of America's best poets that will appeal to virtually any reader remotely interested in poetry. The reader can sample the works of both well known poets like Philip Levine, Ruth L. Schwartz, and Billy Collins as well as lesser known but highly regarded one's such as Tracy K. Smith, Nick Flynn, and Joy Katz. The subjects addressed run the gambit from love, desire, death, and family relationships to a host of other offerings that make this a literal poetry feast of some of the best of the best in contemporary American poetry. A major offering that is sure to delight.

I strongly suggest Buffalo Creek to those who have survived "leverage buyouts" and "corporate veils." There truely is a full circle

This Book is about a king who lives in a castle. He has a baker called Adrian.The King always eats eggs. Adrian makes the king chicken eggs,goose eggs,duck eggs.Then he shouts More More More! The Next day he read in his Newspaper that a dodos egg was spotted on an island.So he told Adrian to prepare the boat.To get to The island.

Stern Vision: A Tree of Hemingway, Yeats, Proust

Gerald Stern's new book, Everything Is Burning, is deft, profound, and perhaps the most enjoyable volume of poems composed in English in decades. It is its own masterwork, combining eight decades of Stern's life with his rollicking roving, greedy reading, and hilarious wisdom. He steals from all he is, which includes a Hemingway eye for exact detail and rich simplicity, Yeats's flow and incantation, and Proust's savage memory that makes a daguerreotype of each significant face, trait, and event. This erudite humanist makes you laugh at clumsy ethnicities, cry with compassion for a dead child sister, and wonder before a lily of the field near a Pocano traffic jam where a former wild student suddenly materializes standing on the highway. Elegant surprise follows elegant surprise. He is shock and paradox.

A relentless moralist, the outrageously observant Stern is incapable of sternness and an enemy of pomp. When everything is burning, he's there, maybe holding a fedora, taking poetic notes, yet also in the mix to participate and feel. He has lived. And that means with Felonious Monk, cat piss in the South Bronx; recording the horror of war camps or sitting alien on a steel railroad track, eating a sandwich. Before his appetite for the fascinating ordinary, lowdown and sordid, the rapturous Mahler, Ecclesiastes and a burned lilac, you must not skip a word, much less a poem, in this beautiful gathering. He takes you to his abode in "Hemingway's House":

I don't want to go to Hemingway's house,
let him come to mine, walk in and we'll do
The Killers at my kitchen table, he with his
back to the Japanese maple, me with my back
to the Maytag, ginger ale for one, white rum
the other; the dragon and the mayfly, death and the
knowledge of death,
Monk and Bartók all the same to me.

I often wonder what makes Jerry run. Of course he has lust in his lungs, and his poetry breathes each year in new ways. Many of our best poets----Eliot, Cummings, Auden, Wordsworth---bloom, mature in their powers, and, alas, wither, becoming a mannerism of earlier word and spirit. Others---Rilke, Yeats, Stevens, or short-lived Wilfred Owen and Hart Crane--- dramatically gain strength. Stern grows. Like his contemporaries Ruth Stone and Stanley Moss, he reveals a cumulatively significant voice, which years magnify. But he remains the child man in his renewals. The vision, lust, and ethics have their unifying center in a bizarre passion, a passion that prevails whether he is out organizing unions, teaching, reading, giving readings, writing books. In those books, memoir, play, essay and poetry, Stern resorts to a spontaneous trickery and wins.

With respect to poetic means, in the Eliot and James Wright tradition Gerald Stern sticks primarily to the line, to an enjambed line that stands alone and sparkles, whether with glass, trash, and even when he writes about a fisherman's worm in a can. Somehow the worms end up like stubby fingers in freezing sun-glare. He doesn't scatter his word pictures on the page. A lyrical blank verse determines prosody, and each word counts in lines that follow with compelling speed and rhythm. This perfection of spontaneity creates belief. Consider his poignant poem "Sylvia" in which he moves from existential speculation to a re collection of his older sister in 1933, a year older than himself, who is dead at nine:

Across a space peopled with stars I am
laughing while my sides ache for existence
it turns out is profound though the profound
because of time it turns out is an illusion
and all of this is infinitely improbable
given the space, for which I gratefully lie
in three feet of snow making a shallow grave
I would have called an angel otherwise and
think of my own rapturous escape from
living only as dust and dirt, little sister.

In an age of extreme commercial and political conformity, of stifling trash culture that holds dominion in the media, the poet is in need. But even among poets---and there are so many fine poets today---there is also classroom conformity, no matter what the pronouncements. Stern belongs to no sect and no one. But then he is with Walt and Emily, with Baudelaire and his prostitutes and blind, with Vladimir Mayakovsky ranting on Brooklyn Bridge, with his grandfather's stick in a Pittsburgh shtetl or the French surrealist Desnos walking among corpses in Buchenwald a few days from his liberation and death from typhus. Stern is the unparalleled voice of injustice, comedy, and survival.

Some years ago Gerald Stern told me that he got a friend to distract the guard in Walt Whitman's house in Camden, New Jersey, so that he could lie down for some minutes in the Quaker poet's bed. I haven't heard the story yet, but I know that in some flower bed in Amherst outside the old Dickinson mansion, there are still night footprints of this wanderer, who, in homage to another deep love, has examined the great shy genius's taste in hyacinths, begonias and hydrangeas. Is he for real? More real and revealing than any of us. Comic, tragic or more often a sly commingling of circumstance and emotion, the universal Stern in Everything is Burning is a treat for reader and re-reader. He is a sheaf of postage stamps with diverse political mugs, lovers, geographies, and nocturnal flower beds that flash the biblical grin of Jerry Stern.
Willis Barnstone

Some of Stern's most phenomenal poems are in this collection. His poetry provides a glorious experience for his readers and inspires countless poets. Thanks to Gerald Stern for inspiring me.

This book will appeal to and inspire anyone who loves sewingand creating with fabrics eg: fabric artists, sewers, quilters, dollmakers, toy makers, etc; although its probabley not for those who tend towards more traditional work.

When I first read this book in the early 1990's I was astounded to discover it had been published in 1978. (Where had I been?) Years ahead of its time, this book introduces the reader to numerous techniques available to those dabbling in "stuffed work".

STUFFEDWORK ??!... well its a good general description for the variety of subjects dealt with in this book in relation to making 3 dimensional fabric "objects". There are brief, but consise chapters on tapunto, quilting, pattern making for various shapes along with a pattern library, cloth doll face and body needle sculpture, etc - get the drift?

Although not in its own special chapter there is a s such a "gallery" of various 1970's artists work scattered through the pages. American fabric artists would probabley be familiar with the cloth fire hydrant and the huge cloth slice of chocolate cake! The work is truly inspirational with the only disappointment being that many of the photo are only black and white.

The only other book I've enjoyed as much in recent years is Ellen Rixfords "3 Dimensional Illustration", which deals only partly with fabric art.

Jerry Stern has been writing poems for over 40 years and is recognized as one of the country's best. This collection continues his stellar path. I had the honor of knowing him in the mid-60's when he taught at a small college in Western Pa. I highly recommend his books to anyone who likes humor, pathos and something that makes you think twice, because he makes you do that in his work.