The Country I Remember - Hardcover

Mason, David

4.43

14 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1885266200 ISBN 13: 9781885266200

Publisher: Story Line Press, 1996

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In poems of historical and personal memory, a father and daughter share recollections of the Civil War

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About the Author:

David Mason was co-winner of the 1991 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize with his book, The Buried Houses. His second book, The Country I Remember, won the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award in 1996. With Mark Jarman, he edited Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism, which is now in its fourth printing, and in 2002 he issued his collection of essays, The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry. He teaches at Colorado College.

From Publishers Weekly:

Mason's second collection (after The Buried Houses) features the title poem, which won the The Poetry Society of America's DiCastagnola Award. This 1300-line family and national saga is narrative poetry at its best. Told in the distinct voices of a father, Lt. Mitchell, and his daughter, Mrs. Maggie Gresham, it spans from 1830 to 1960 and deals with the frontier's lure, westward migration, the Civil War (dominating half the poem) and the modernization and urbanization of America. Mason's rhythm is simple but mesmerizing in the way of good storytelling: " 'All wars are... fought by boys,' " says Lt. Mitchell, quoting Melville as read to him by Maggie. Then he adds: "And I saw schoolkids torn apart by bullets,/ their heads bashed in by Confederate rifles./ And I saw Yankees do a thing or two/ to make those people hate us all their lives." After the family of eight moves west to Oregon, Maggie leaves home at 29, marries at 37, lives in four cities and ends up a childless widow in L.A.: "They say to grow old without children is/ a curse, and sometimes I believe it's true.../ I have a niece who comes/ and takes me for a drive out by the sea/ and shows me how the city's spreading out/ clear to the mountains." Following this poem, a model of narrative scope combined with poetic compression, are 12 short works, notably a three-sonnet sequence and six elegiac narratives.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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