Letter to an imaginary friend

McGrath, Thomas 1916-1990 (author.). Schanilec, Gaylord, (illustrator.). Copper Canyon Press, (publisher.). Press Collection (Library of Congress) (Added Author).

Summary: An epic poem on America by a late poet. "And I am only a device of memory / To call forth into this Present the flowering dead and the living / To enter the labyrinth and blaze the trail for the enduring journey / Toward the rounddance and commune of light ..."

Item details

ISBN: 1556590784
ISBN: 9781556590825
ISBN: 1556590822
ISBN: 9781556590788
ISBN: 1556590786
ISBN: 9781556590771
ISBN: 1556590776
Physical Description: iv, 413 pages ; 23 cm
print
Publisher: Port Townsend, Wash. : Copper Canyon Press, [1997]
Copyright: ©1997

Contents / Notes

General Note:	Dust jacket art by Gaylord Schanilec. LC copy in original illustrated dust jacket.
Formatted Contents Note:	Trummerfrauen -- Abstraction -- All the Wide Grin of Him -- Sunflowers, Repossessed -- Killing the Grubs -- Middle-Class Vantage -- Dinner Party -- Judgment -- On Ethnic Definitions -- What Was Going On -- Ode to Innocence -- The Pillar -- Facing into It -- A Poem of Exile -- Filling in the Blanks -- Salute to Donald Davie -- Working the Block -- Her Body is Private -- On the Road to Larry Robin's Bookstore -- Women Talking -- "...now I can go on and on" -- "...Zero at the Bone" -- You, Failed Pronoun -- Job's Wife, a Twentieth-Century Casting Script -- Off the Hook -- Conditional Riff -- Winged Victory -- Of a Sun She Can Remember -- Blessing -- The Messenger -- Up Against It -- Night Fishing in the Sound -- Being As I Was, How Could I Help... -- When Asked to Lie Down on the Altar -- "...as soft and as pink as a nursery..." -- The Love of What is Not -- Amelia -- Admonition -- Operations: Desert Shield, Desert Storm -- Bat Cave -- Ume: Plum -- The Bird in the Laurel's Song -- How to Get in the Best Magazines -- The Muse -- Leda's Handmaiden -- Ambition -- The Lament of the Valkyrie -- The Secret Garden -- Those Who Come After -- Generic Vision, 1991 -- What Was Left Over -- Atget's Gardens -- Moonsnails -- Freed from Another Context -- The Mulch -- Kazuko's Vision -- American Painting, with Rain -- Changing the Imperatives -- Coda, Overture -- Reading the Bible Backwards -- Miriam's Song -- Minor Epic -- Desert Parable -- Sarah's Choice -- Postscript -- Two Pairs of Eyes -- "Never Apologize for Poetry" -- Classical Proportions of the Heart -- Beauty and the Beast -- The Last Man -- The American Sublime: Robert Penn Warren -- Tucson Gardens -- High Noon at Los Alamos -- As Far as it Goes, and Back -- Nandin's Tail -- The Towers of Silence -- It's Not Cold Here -- "Midway the journey of this life..." -- The Green Connection -- Conversation with a Japanese Student -- Having Eaten of the Tree of Knowledge -- Emigration -- Without Regret -- Eleusis -- The World is Not a Meditation -- Candied -- Concerto -- A Short History of Philosophy -- The Fourth David -- See-Saw -- So Quietly the World -- Ars Poetica -- Meditation on the Wen-Fu -- Hunting Manual -- Metamorphoses at a College for Women -- The Literal = The Abstract: A Demonstration -- The Oldest Desire -- Elegy for a Writer -- My Mother's Portrait -- Labyrinth -- Recovery -- The Continuous is Broken, and Resumes -- The End of the Line -- Ex Libris -- Landing -- Epitaph -- Unstrung -- East of the Sun, West of the Moon -- Water Lace and White Eyes -- Natural History -- maya -- Knowing the Enemy -- The Round Fish -- A Comment on the Relevance of Modern Science to the Everyday Lives of the Larger Animals -- Renegade -- Iphigenia, Setting the Record Straight -- A Private Space -- Beyond the Second Landing -- Bailing Out -- A Poem for the 1970s -- Closing Ceremonies for the Bicentennial -- Lament -- The Illuminator -- Instructions to Painters by Wang Wei, Eighth Century -- Mt. Fuji and the Martial Arts -- Made by Hand -- Thoughts of a Retired Diamond Cutter -- Laurels -- Love Uncommanded -- Winter Garden -- Bridge Passage: Variations on Two Scales.
Citation/References Note:	Rulon-Miller, R. Quarter to midnight : Gaylord Schanilec & Midnight Paper Sales, A.171