David R. Slavitt's Books

Change of Address

Poems, New and Selected

By: David R. Slavitt

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Change of Address

Poems, New and Selected

By: David R. Slavitt

A selection of recent work as well as the best from thirteen volumes of poetry published across four decades, Change of Address highlights the magnitude and scope of David Slavitt's poetic achievement. Meditating on both the quotidian and the sublime and ranging from brilliant satire to tender elegy, this retrospective collection brings into sharp relief Slavitt's intelligence, strength of voice, and ease in varied poetic forms. From the beginning of his career, Slavitt has displayed a rare technical virtuosity, and his verse has long confronted -- with urbanity and poise -- questions of love, grief, loss, and death. Though he is an exuberantly playful poet, his gamesmanship is earnest, toying wisely and bravely with the largest experiences of joy and heartbreak. And his gestures, while seemingly effortless, are carefully considered. The result is a body of poetry that haunts us as only the best literature can. A splendid capstone to Slavitt's copious output, Change of Address grants readers access to the extraordinary spectrum of his poetry in a single volume. body betrays, and even a mind can rebel, but against what? What remains? Slowly but surely, we are forced to suppose a soul, which serves us well, while we serve it unfaithfully and impurely. Infinitely regressive? Or merely shy? Call it what watches, suffers, and remains our subject/object, despite whatever pains we may impose upon it, an inner I.Or is it a mere fiction that one may admit as useful or even necessary? Its truth is theoretical, a series, a trend, almost algebraic: and one conjures it from the motes that fly in the thin air of his youth to create the granite block that marks his end. -- "Soul

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276

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807130044

ISBN 13

9780807130049

Short Stories Are Not Real Life

Stories

By: David R. Slavitt

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Short Stories Are Not Real Life

Stories

By: David R. Slavitt

In these fourteen beautifully crafted stories David R. Slavitt shows his mastery of the form. Elegant, spare, sometimes funny, sometimes elegiac—this collection reflects a writer in admirable control of his craft. The title story (complete with footnotes á la The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction) braids together the tidy conventions of fiction and the brutal reality of New York as a writing teacher ponders s student’s sexually explicit story that may—or may not—be autobiographical. In “The Impostor” a writer’s brother exploits the legerdemain of fiction in a series of ever-bolder impersonations. Several of the stories are presented by emotionally wounded narrators, disillusioned men looking for a hint of grace in a world where expectations are frequently doomed to disappointment. In such a world only one thing is certain we will hurt—and be hurt by—the ones we love. And in the vacuum left when traditions that might have been redemptive have lost their meaning, “punishment gets to be a habit, a way of life, or at least something to hold onto.” The stories pivot on nuance, on the half-realized insight, on “some perfectly innocent and insignificant insight, on “some perfectly innocent and insignificant gesture that turns round and grows into a medium-to-large awkwardness.” We find what the divorced father futilely awaiting his daughter’s visit in “Hurricane Charlie” calls “dabblers in distress”: lonely, decent people trying to discover where love—and life—went. In “Simple Justice” a man striving for some definitive family memory compares the process to archaeology: “The shards that remain are pathetically small and almost grudging.” Thus through the faltering memory of an elderly cousin in “conflations” a man becomes a kind of incarnation of his own father and for a moment finds himself at the “vanishing point” where a lost past meets an unknowable future; in “The long Island Train” a simple anecdote becomes a metaphor for the opacity of the most apparently transparent human intentions. Yet it is often these shard of tradition and memory that seem to hold our only promise of transcendence. The protagonist of “Grandfather,” for example, through his reluctant participation in his grandson’s bris, finds a moment of reconciliation with a past that has broken loose of its moorings. Even the most experimental of these pieces—“Instructions,” a list of admonitions ranging from the quotidian to the cosmic—shows a deep humanity and a maturity of vision that steers adeptly between humor and despair. These stories will linger in the reader’s memory long after the book is closed.

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194

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807124729

ISBN 13

9780807124727

PS3569.L3

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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PS3569.L3

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

PS3569.L3, David R. Slavitt’s sixtieth book, is a collection of poems, translations, imitations, parodies, jeux de mots, and jeux d’esprit—work that ranges from grief-stricken brooding to exuberant clowning around. The odd title, for instance, is nothing more or less than the author’s Library of Congress identification, which he adopts now that it has adopted him. Few contemporary poets display his range of sensibility and response to the various occasions of chaotic existence in our time, and Slavitt offers us his reactions to those stresses and cultural shocks that have not so much engaged his attention as ambushed it. He writes poetry that ascends to Pindar and Meleager, or descends some traditional prosodic scale even to the point where it risks gibberish—or basks in it—and he makes no apology for this.

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108

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LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807123013

ISBN 13

9780807123010

Blue State Blues

By: David Slavitt

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Blue State Blues

By: David Slavitt

A political neophyte challenges the status quo or How a Cranky Conservative Launched a Campaign and Found Himself the Liberal Candidate (and Still Lost)

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412

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Wesleyan University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0819568066

ISBN 13

9780819568069

The Cliff

A Novel

By: David R. Slavitt

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The Cliff

A Novel

By: David R. Slavitt

John Smith is an imminent historian, secure in his well-paid position as an endowed professor at a major university. Any day he expects a favorable reply to his application for a residency at the Villa Sfrondata, a foundation-supported colony for artists and intellectuals on the banks of Italy’s Lake Como, where he hopes to finish work on a study of Mussolini John Smith—the other John Smith—is a bitter and failed novelist, an adjunct assistant professor of English at the same university. Suffering from writer’s block, ignored by his daughter, hounded by his former wife’s attorney for back alimony, and about to lose his job, his prospects could not be dimmer—that is, until the day the Villa Sfrondata’s invitation to the eminent historian is delivered to him by mistake. Before you know it, the down-and-out-how-can-things-get-worse-what-have-I-got-to-lose John Smith is in Italy, ensconced, imposter though he is, in a room at the centuries-old villa. But what had promised to be a blissful if ill-gotten idyll quickly sours. The villa is drafty and decaying, the staffs are surly and incompetent, and the other residents—among them a Nigerian economist, a Washington lawyer, a book designer, an art historian, and a feminist poet from California—are a motley and eccentric group whom Smith finds all but insufferable. He seizes every opportunity to deflate their overblown pretensions with a razor-sharp wit, which he possesses in astonishing abundance. At the same time, he must take care that some misstep does not reveal him as a fraud. His life is further complicated when one of the guest—the despised feminist poet—mysteriously disappears. After passing through what he calls “a cloudy afternoon of the soul,” including the very real fear that he will be implicated in the disappearance of the poet, Smith contrives in the end to amend his life and even to revive his all but abandoned literary career. This devastatingly satiric and funny book, David R. Slavitt’s fiftieth, is a complicated burlesque that turns out to be a moving story of human frailty and spiritual rebirth. It is a feat of literary legerdemain that will dazzle even admirers of Slavitt’s Turkish Delights, Lives of the Saints, Salazar Blinks, and The Hussar.

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174

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LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807117811

ISBN 13

9780807117811

A Gift

The Life of da Ponte: A Poem

By: David R. Slavitt

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A Gift

The Life of da Ponte: A Poem

By: David R. Slavitt

Epic poem, biography, literary criticism, historical romance—in A Gift, David Slavitt presents the fascinating life of Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, one of history’s great unknowns, a man blessed and cursed by his conviction that within him lay the capacity for literary greatness. Educated in the church, the young da Ponte carouses in Venice, flees Italy, and finds himself in Austria, trying to establish a career in the theater. Under the tepid patronage of Joseph II of Austria, he turns out libretti for Salieri and learns the “whorey tricks” of writing on demand: “Adaptation, translation, theft.” In lines that ring harrowingly true, Slavitt reflects the young man’s self-doubts: The mad hope grows like a mold on bread that it’s not so bad, is better than you think— but what that means is only that your judgment is going too, you can’t tell good from bad, are a fraud, impostor Then, on the brink of despair, he encounters Mozart—boorish, preferring crude farce to literary grace. Still, the partnership thrives with The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte. But good luck is not to be trusted, and “misfortune is not reliable either.” Despite his brilliant gift, success eludes da Ponte. Ever gullible, ever generous, he is destined to accumulate others’ debts, to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, to be forgotten. Da Ponte lives out his life in the fledgling United States, plagued by sickness, debt, and the implacably looming specter of failure. Slavitt has created a lovely, heartening book, one that reminds us that untested faith is no faith at all. Alight with muted passion, A Gift chronicles a man’s refusal to despair despite the growing awareness that nothing awaits but poverty and ignominy—“that this ill-fitting garment is what the wardrobe holds.” Through Slavitt’s lively imagination, we feel reverence rather than pity for the dogged nobility of da Ponte’s struggle. Ultimately, Lorenzo da Ponte is a hero, his life a victory.

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807120480

ISBN 13

9780807120484

Re Verse

Essays on Poetry and Poets

By: David R. Slavitt

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Re Verse

Essays on Poetry and Poets

By: David R. Slavitt

David R. Slavitt will tell you that he does not believe in literary criticism so much as in "remarks," which are more portable and, often, more enlightening. In this witty and unusual work, he remarks upon the life of a poet in the second half of the twentieth century, how it was--and how it is--to be an American writer. Combining personal reminiscence with deft literary analysis, incisive biographical sketches, and, sometimes, literary gossip, these essays give new perspectives on the famous--such as Harold Bloom, Robert Penn Warren, Robert Frost, and Stephen Spender--and recover the charms of the near-forgotten--such as Dudley Fitts, Winfield Townley Scott, Merrill Moore and John Hall Wheelock. Slavitt writes with self-deprecating humor of his own literary education, and uses his impressive experience and erudition to illuminate the whims of poetic influence, passion, and reputation. With a refreshing honesty and considerable poise, he gives readers an enlightening view of the vast and ever-changing literary universe.

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225

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Northwestern University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810120844

ISBN 13

9780810120846

Death Benefits

A Century of Sonnets

By: David R. Slavitt

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Death Benefits

A Century of Sonnets

By: David R. Slavitt

Death Benefits deepens and extends David R. Slavitt’s sublime, lyric confrontation with mortality—and does so in a plainspoken and marvelously entertaining, conversational way. His poetry encourages us to recognize our own predicaments, as we see ourselves reflected as fellow sufferers entrapped by daily circumstance. In his new collection, Slavitt presents a sequence of one hundred sonnets, each one loaded with life, observation, and quicksilver wit. Readers will delight in looking on with wonder, at every turn of the page, to see how the poet will pull it off this time and what kind of linguistic magic he will use to fend off the mortal pain of getting through each day. His voice plays over the grid of the meter in utterly natural intonations. His music squarely faces the dark, but its enduring note is faith in common sense and the pleasure that poetry provides, rather than cynicism or despair.

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113

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LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807183490

ISBN 13

9780807183496

Falling from Silence

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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Falling from Silence

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

Falling from Silence is the seventy-third book by David Slavitt, the prolific poet, novelist, translator, and editor. His amazing rate of production has only amplified and refined the power of his art. This is the work of an accomplished veteran, a craftsman who laments the limitations of what his hard-earned talent can do in the face of age and loss. He turns to religion, reads the classics, and in moments of cheer that may not be mere mania, he horses around and fools with the words that have been his toys, but nothing helps—or, more accurately, nothing helps enough. It is nevertheless true that, as he says in “Pen,” The letters that danced in the light like gnats will suddenly light on some twig of a notion a held breath can make tremble in an unpredictable motion—like this pen’s— that no one would think could bear the fruit of truth. Ranging in tone from devilish and droll to dignified and desolate, the poems here examine death and aging and bespeak the reassuring connection between the generations. In “Angel of Death,” the speaker remarkably balances grief and joy in describing the birth of his grandson, who bears the name of the poet’s father: “I hold him in my arms, the precious, breathing / weight, and admire the tiny hands / that will bear the weight one day of my coffin’s corner. . . . / That a Sam once more will carry me is a comfort.” Slavitt’s wry wit, profound humanity, and agile intellect illuminate every page of Falling from Silence. In contrast to its title, it is, indeed, a resounding poetic triumph.

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100

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

080712673X

ISBN 13

9780807126738

The Seven Deadly Sins

And Other Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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The Seven Deadly Sins

And Other Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

In The Seven Deadly Sins and Other Poems, veteran poet David R. Slavitt touches on topics from the mundane to the mysterious with his signature wit and intelligence. In "Stupid," for instance, he transforms a simple head cold into an appreciation for the richness of consciousness, and in "Waking," the very effort of rising from bed becomes something like a miracle. Slavitt explores the range of the human condition with such ease and insight that readers cannot help but ponder what life is - and what it could be. What if - like the mythic sea creature in "The Dogfish" - humans could return to the womb when frightened? In the collection's title poem, Slavitt gives a voice to the Seven Deadly Sins, each of which claims, persuasively, to possess a value to humans that is seldom noticed or appreciated. Slavitt has a unique ability to examine an idea - be it virtue or vice, dark or blithe - and offer perspective and wisdom about the conundrums of our existence." --Book Jacket.

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807134023

ISBN 13

9780807134023

Crossroads

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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Crossroads

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807117536

ISBN 13

9780807117538

Epic and Epigram

Two Elizabethan Entertainments

By: John Owen,David R. Slavitt

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Epic and Epigram

Two Elizabethan Entertainments

By: John Owen,David R. Slavitt

This work provides translations of epigrams by 16th-century Welsh academic John Owen, including Duessa's Version: A Dirge in Seven Canticles, which offers an irreverent recapitulation of The Faerie Queene.

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807121517

ISBN 13

9780807121511

Eight Longer Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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Eight Longer Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

David R. Slavitt brings together eight poems that deal largely with the mind's relation to history--personal history, and the history of myth and of empires. In addressing these two seemingly independent modes of thinking and remembering, Slavitt reveals that they are in fact closely related, and that they are both part of our poetic consciousness.

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807115975

ISBN 13

9780807115978

The Book of Lamentations

A Meditation and Translation

By: David R. Slavitt

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The Book of Lamentations

A Meditation and Translation

By: David R. Slavitt

This unique translation of the Old Testament book, with reflections on Judaism’s mournful history, “not only allows but demands rereading” (Pleiades). Distinguished poet David R. Slavitt here provides a translation of and meditation upon the Book of Lamentations, the biblical account of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 587 B.C., on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av—Tish’a b’Av. (Six centuries later the Romans destroyed the second Temple on the same day.) Most of the Jewish population was deported to Babylon, and the ensuing period came to be known as the Babylonian Captivity. According to tradition, the Book of Lamentations was written in response to this political, social, and religious crisis. The five poems composing the book express Israel’s sorrow, brokenness, and bewilderment before God. Tish’a b’Av is the day on which observant Jews fast and pray. And mourn. As Slavitt observes in his meditation: “It is forbidden on Tish’a b’Av even to study the Torah, except for the Book of Job and the Book of Lamentations. This is the day on which we grieve for every terrible thing that happens in this world. It is the worst day of the year.” Slavitt’s meditation provides a context for reading the scriptural text. Cast in the same style as the Hebrew poetry, his meditation recounts how sorrow and catastrophe have characterized so much of the history of the Jewish people, from their enslavement in Egypt to the Holocaust of Nazi Germany. Few translations of this remarkable book of the Bible attempt to reproduce in English, as Slavitt does here, the Hebrew acrostics. In the original, each verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet in sequential order; Slavitt elegantly reproduces this effect using the first 22 letters of the English alphabet. More than a structural or mnemonic device, Slavitt argues, the acrostics are “a serious assertion that the language itself is speaking, that the speech is inspired, and that there is, beyond all the disaster and pain the book recounts, an intricacy and an orderly coherence.”

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105

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801876907

ISBN 13

9780801876905

William Henry Harrison and Other Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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William Henry Harrison and Other Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

The prodigiously imaginative mind and penetrating wit of David R. Slavitt are on full display in his newest collection of poetry that is perhaps his most engaging to date. The title poem begins by fooling around— “With three names like that, it sounds as though his mother is calling him and she’s really angry”—but then builds into a shrewd, thoughtful account of the life of the ninth U.S. president. A second long poem offers a fresh and very amusing appraisal of the practice of buying, writing, and sending souvenir postcards. In between this pair, there are shorter pieces impressive in their range and tone and theme (be sure to read “Poem without Even One Word”) that dazzle in an already glittering body of work. Slavitt’s poems can be playful, even silly, and then astonishingly convert levity into earnest urgency. Dark lines glint with the light of intelligence and mirth, even as artful puns and jokes reveal a rueful aspect. The poet gets older but his work is as graceful as ever, the lovable little boy signaling from inside the sometimes-cranky septuagenarian.

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807131210

ISBN 13

9780807131213

Equinox and Other Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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Equinox and Other Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

Equinox is a collection of twenty-five poems on various subjects. They are occasional, in that most of them are the result of specific moments of experience.

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ISBN 10

0807114847

ISBN 13

9780807114841

The Rig Veda

First Mandala

By: David R. Slavitt

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The Rig Veda

First Mandala

By: David R. Slavitt

The Vedas are ancient books of hymns. There are four—the Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda—and they are the primary texts of Hinduism. They had an enormous influence also on Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. According to Hindus, the text of the Vedas is as old as the universe itself. Scholars have determined that the Rig Veda, the oldest of the four, was composed sometime between 1700 and 1100 B.C.E., codified about 600 B.C.E., and was finally committed to writing around 300 B.C.E. The Rig Veda, composed of ten books, or Mandalas, each of which is a collection of hymns (s?ktas), is one of these “great books,” but most people—even the well-educated—have never read it. It is very long and the previous translations are unsatisfactory. This book is an attempt to offer a succinct, accurate and readable translation.

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260

Publisher

Anaphora Literary Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1681142163

ISBN 13

9781681142166

Civil Wars

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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Civil Wars

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

Praise for David R. Slavitt “Slavitt’s touch is light, and he writes beautifully.... His satire is sharp, and he can be wildly funny.”—New York Times Book Review “One of America’s most lucid and classical poets.... Slavitt’s attitude is, as one would expect of a Hebrew as well as Greco-Latin classicist, sharply questioning as well as tragic. He is a poet one reads to know more.”—Booklist “Slavitt is both smart and wise; he’s as well known for his translations of the writers of antiquity as he is for his original work, both poetry and prose.... With a rich sense of humor, a bit of attitude, and a fascination with details, even minutiae, Slavitt tries his hand at new and curious measures and forms as well as seemingly free-range meditations—or, one might say, meanderings.”—Library Journal The bravura of David R. Slavitt’s first book of poems, published more than fifty years ago, continues to reverberate through his newest collection in a voice matured and roughened by age. Civil Wars conjures the mutterings of old men: meditations—despondent yet playfully witty and bold—on the meaning of life and death, the reasoning for human action or inaction, and misremembered memories. Nothing proves too lofty or too trifling for the poet’s scrutiny. Slavitt’s attention roves from the carnage inflicted by the Achaeans at Troy, to the performances of Borrah Minevich and the Harmonica Rascals, from meditations on Spinoza to the baseball of the New York Yankees. He considers with deliberation all of these subjects and deems them necessary to help create a spiritual connection in our lives. Slavitt encourages contemplation of the world and writing rather than acceptance of the thoughts of the critic, who “comes, austere, a man of authority, / and offers to help” but only dilutes the power of a poem. In this collection, Slavitt also includes translations of Greek, Hebrew, Provençal, French, and Old English poems, including a little-known piece by the mathematician Pierre de Fermat and the Old English epic poem “The Battle of Maldon.”

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807151815

ISBN 13

9780807151815

Orlando Furioso

A New Verse Translation

By: Lodovico Ariosto,David R. Slavitt

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Orlando Furioso

A New Verse Translation

By: Lodovico Ariosto,David R. Slavitt

The appearance of David Slavitt's translation of 'Orlando Furioso', one of the great literary achievements of the Italian Renaissance, is a publishing event. With this translation, Slavitt introduces readers to Ariosto's now neglected masterpiece, a poem whose Western literature can scarcely be exaggerated.

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689

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674035356

ISBN 13

9780674035355

Change of Address

Poems, New and Selected

By: David R. Slavitt

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Change of Address

Poems, New and Selected

By: David R. Slavitt

A selection of recent work as well as the best from thirteen volumes of poetry published across four decades, Change of Address highlights the magnitude and scope of David Slavitt's poetic achievement. Meditating on both the quotidian and the sublime and ranging from brilliant satire to tender elegy, this retrospective collection brings into sharp relief Slavitt's intelligence, strength of voice, and ease in varied poetic forms. From the beginning of his career, Slavitt has displayed a rare technical virtuosity, and his verse has long confronted -- with urbanity and poise -- questions of love, grief, loss, and death. Though he is an exuberantly playful poet, his gamesmanship is earnest, toying wisely and bravely with the largest experiences of joy and heartbreak. And his gestures, while seemingly effortless, are carefully considered. The result is a body of poetry that haunts us as only the best literature can. A splendid capstone to Slavitt's copious output, Change of Address grants readers access to the extraordinary spectrum of his poetry in a single volume. body betrays, and even a mind can rebel, but against what? What remains? Slowly but surely, we are forced to suppose a soul, which serves us well, while we serve it unfaithfully and impurely. Infinitely regressive? Or merely shy? Call it what watches, suffers, and remains our subject/object, despite whatever pains we may impose upon it, an inner I. Or is it a mere fiction that one may admit as useful or even necessary? Its truth is theoretical, a series, a trend, almost algebraic: and one conjures it from the motes that fly in the thin air of his youth to create the granite block that marks his end. -- "Soul

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280

Publisher

LSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807130036

ISBN 13

9780807130032

The Duke's Man

A Novel

By: David R. Slavitt

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The Duke's Man

A Novel

By: David R. Slavitt

Part historical novel, part critical history and biography, and part Dadaist pastiche, The Duke's man is ultimately an affectionate send-up of the excesses of genre fiction, using sections of Dumas' text as a springboard for Slavitt's own narrative arabesques."--Book cover

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173

Publisher

Northwestern University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810127008

ISBN 13

9780810127005

De Rerum Natura, The Nature of Things

A Poetic Translation

By: Lucretius

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De Rerum Natura, The Nature of Things

A Poetic Translation

By: Lucretius

This elegant new translation at last restores the poetry to one of the greatest and most influential poems in the Western tradition. De Rerum Natura is Lucretius's majestic elaboration of Greek Epicurean physics and psychology in an epic that unfolds over the course of six books. This sumptuous account of a secular cosmos argues that the soul is mortal, that pleasure is the object of life, and that humanity has free will, among other ideas. Renowned author, translator, and poet David R. Slavitt has captured Lucretius's elegance as well as his philosophical profundity in this highly readable translation of a poem that is crucial to the history of ancient thought.

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322

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Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520942760

ISBN 13

9780520942769

Crossroads

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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Crossroads

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

In his twelfth book of original verse David R. Slavitt leads us to a crossroads where terror, loneliness, and despair are transfigured by love and art. Much of the collection centers on the poet’s family history. In the title poem, Slavitt imagines the “dour landscape” of the Polish hamlet his grandparents left in search of a safer haven, at the same time that he reflects ruefully on the hazards of contemporary life in America: but what they abandoned is what I dream of now, asleep, while people who don’t even know my name monitor consoles that show what zones in my house have been violated—what doors or windows opened, or motion sensors tripped by the cat or some intruder. On the street, cars are stolen and stripped by desperate men, wild children . . . Who can say? In another poem, he recalls his mother and his discovery only after her death—her murder—that the name she had been given was not Adele but Ida. As a young woman she had chosen to call herself something “not too cute, but not too plain, not Ida.” And it is Adele he decides on for her grave marker, in deference to her whimsical and brave spirit. Not only family but also the worlds of art, music, and literature animate Slavitt’s verses—from a consideration of the modes of salvation suggested by El Grenco’s and Goy’s paintings of Saint Peter to a reflection upon our common response to a discordantly tuned instrument, from echoes of Paradise Lost to witty and deft variations on Catullus. Throughout this collection David Slavitt’s keen intelligence, wry humor, and deep compassion shine through. Crossroads allows us to observe a poet working at the peak of his powers.

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807117544

ISBN 13

9780807117545

The Octaves

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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The Octaves

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

An accomplished poet and a keen observer of the human condition, David Slavitt deploys both skills to create the whimsical, insightful, and witty poems of The Octaves. In these graceful but often blunt, slyly humorous eight-line poems, Slavitt notes the passing of decades and the loss that entails, the questions that arise when studying works from ancient Greece, and the paradoxes found in philosophy, art, and even the common cold.

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120

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

0807166391

ISBN 13

9780807166390

Transforming the Culture of Dying

The Work of the Project on Death in America

By: David Clark

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Transforming the Culture of Dying

The Work of the Project on Death in America

By: David Clark

Transforming the Culture of Dying assesses the establishment of the Project on Death in America and evaluates its the contributions to the development of the palliative care field and end of life care in American society.

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305

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Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199311617

ISBN 13

9780199311613

Fabrications

By: Slavitt, David

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Fabrications

By: Slavitt, David

Fabrications: is a spritely love story that in its odd way recapitulates Henry James's The Wings of the Dove. A young man and a young woman are in love but don't have the financial resources they know they will need not just to be comfortable but to avoid the resentment either one would feel about having made a great sacrifice for their lives together. In James's story, Merton Densher married a wealthy young woman at death's door so he can inherit the money he needs in order to marry Kate Croy. Here, it is Nadine, the starlet, who marries the elderly producer with heart trouble so that she and Abner, the writer, can look forward to a life of comfort and ease. Slavitt notices what James didn't, or couldn't in 1902—that the situation is inherently comic. And he has written a novel that is sprightlier than its model but, because of its humor, closer to the texture of life.

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Anaphora Literary Press

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ISBN 10

1681140861

ISBN 13

9781681140865

Falling from Silence

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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Falling from Silence

Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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100

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LSU Press

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ISBN 10

080712673X

ISBN 13

9780807126738

Opus Posthumous and Other Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

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Opus Posthumous and Other Poems

By: David R. Slavitt

As he enters his sixth decade of publishing poetry, David R. Slavitt remains a determined wildcatter who ranges as far as he thinks necessary to drill for meaning, wherever and however he can get it. In his new collection, Slavitt traverses Africa, India, Israel, and the America in which he finds himself, complete with visits to zoos, casinos, baseball fields, and cemeteries, as he searches for clues from which he might learn at least a little. He translates verse from Yiddish and Provençal and offers commentaries on received wisdom, everyday events, and the vagaries of existence. With Opus Posthumous and Other Poems—the title is a joke, as he remains very much alive—Slavitt presents an august work possessed of a richness toward which he has worked throughout his long life. By turns wry, erudite, and dyspeptic, this new volume offers ample rewards of his maturity.

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LSU Press

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0807176435

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9780807176436

Walloomsac

By: Slavitt, David

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Walloomsac

By: Slavitt, David

If a novel is a work of prose of some length, this is a novel–but different in that it is more like life, which has no plots and does not reward virtue or punish vice, and in which characters appear and then, if the author doesn’t kill them off, remain to the end. Life is messier than Tolstoy and Henry James were willing to admit. Here, in David R. Slavitt’s farrago, one thing leads to another but without discernible direction until, at the end, there is a kind of resolution, a vision, however unreliable and approximate, of what the life of the speaker has been. It is a deeply thoughtful book but also laugh-out-loud funny. Like life, if we’re lucky.

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178

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Anaphora Literary Press

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ISBN 10

1681140268

ISBN 13

9781681140261

Argonautika

The Voyage of Jason and the Argonauts

By: Mary Zimmerman,Peter Green,David R. Slavitt

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Argonautika

The Voyage of Jason and the Argonauts

By: Mary Zimmerman,Peter Green,David R. Slavitt

As in her Tony Award–winning Metamorphoses, Mary Zimmerman transforms Greek mythology—here the story of Jason and the Argonauts—into a mesmerizing piece of theater. Encountering an array of daunting challenges in their “first voyage of the world,” Jason and his crew illustrate the essence of all such journeys to follow—their unpredictability, their inspiring and overwhelming breadth of emotion, their lessons in the inevitability of failure and loss. Bursts of humor and fantastical creatures enrich a story whose characters reveal remarkable complexity. Medea is profoundly sympathetic even as the seeds are sown for the monstrous life ahead of her, and the brute strength of Hercules leaves him no less vulnerable to the vicissitudes of love. Zimmerman brings to Argonautika her trademark ability to encompass the full range of human experience in a work as entertaining as it is enlightening.

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186

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Northwestern University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810126060

ISBN 13

9780810126060

George Sanders, Zsa Zsa, and Me

By: David R. Slavitt

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George Sanders, Zsa Zsa, and Me

By: David R. Slavitt

Part memoir and part moving meditation on the price of fame, Slavitt looks back to the world of 1950s Hollywood to write a chronicle of the costs of the modern celebrity culture.

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174

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Northwestern University Press

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ISBN 10

0810126249

ISBN 13

9780810126244

The Carnivore

By: David R. Slavitt

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The Carnivore

By: David R. Slavitt

Directly or obliquely, while reading Gibbon or shopping for toys at F. A. O. Schwarz, Slavitt addresses, invokes, or simply enjoys the civilization that has been the poet's true subject from the time of the wandering bards. Upon the foundation of technical mastery, he has begun to build an oeuvre, to assert himself, and, with insouciance and gaiety, to grow into his majority. Originally published in 1965. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

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UNC Press Books

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ISBN 10

1469644193

ISBN 13

9781469644196

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