The act of love: a preface -- Doctor jazz / by Brooks Haxton -- Haydn Carruth / by Stephen Dobyns -- Father's day -- Last Poems from Previously Published Works. "The Birth of Venus" ; Section IV: Ignis ; "R.M.D". ; Afterword: What he poet had written ; "Michigan water: a few riffs before dawn" ; The wheel of being II ; "My father's face" ; Haiku ; "Moon" ; "Poetical abstracts" ; "Words for my daughter from the asylum" ; "Aura" ; "Paragraphs" ; "The final version" ; Section 125 ; "The cowshed blues" ; "Shake, well before using" ; "No supervening thought of grace" ; "Song: so why does this dead carnation" ; "Moonset" ; Sonnet 63 ; "Mother" ; "Woodsmoke at 70" ; "Scrambled eggs and whiskey" ; "Turning back the clocks" ; "A few dilapidated arias" -- Last Poems. After television ; See you tomorrow ; "Apres de ma blonde ..." ; Derailed ; For Wendell ; Notes for new poem ; Poem no. X ; What? say again, please? ; James Wright ; A vision of now ; For Geof ; In memoriam ; [Fragment] ; Who zat aknockin ; The last piece of chocolate ; Valenitne ; Mark ; Q & A ; [Untitled] ; Sunday afternoon ; Who's yer muse? ; Card ; Financial effrontery ; You can't get here from there ; Poem maybe ; [Poem] ; Hey, Spike, wait up willya? ; Poem/H.C./6/7/08.
Summary, etc.:
This book is a tender and fearless volume that combines the poems written toward the end of the author's life with the concluding poems from twenty-six of his previous volumes. Throughout his career and until the time of his death in 2008, he was writing a morally engaged poetry unlike any in American literature. As this volume demonstrates, he always remained unafraid to face the sufferings of the self while celebrating the dignity of others. In his final, posthumously published poems, he directly confronts his own failing body as well as the global injustices that haunted his writing for six decades. With essays by Stephen Dobyns and Brooks Haxton, Last Poems is a moving tribute to a towering and beloved figure in American poetry.