David Ferry’s Followers (9)

David Ferry

Born

in Orange, New Jersey, The United States

March 05, 1924

Died

November 05, 2023

Genre

Poetry

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David Ferry was born in Orange, New Jersey in 1924. He is the author of a number of books of poetry and has translated several works from classical languages. Currently he is the Sophie Chantal Hart Professor Emeritus of English at Wellesley College, as well as a visiting lecturer in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Boston University and a distinguished visiting scholar at Suffolk University.

His book of new and selected poems and translations, Of No Country I Know, published in 1999 by the University of Chicago Press, received the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress.

In 2011 he was awarded the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize ...more

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David Ferry’s books

Average rating: 3.87 · 3,603 ratings · 507 reviews · 52 distinct works • Similar authors

	Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations 3.87 avg rating — 319 ratings — published 2012 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations 4.31 avg rating — 48 ratings — published 1999 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dwelling Places: Poems and Translations 4.40 avg rating — 20 ratings — published 1993 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Strangers: A Book of Poems 3.75 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 1983 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Total Mets: The Definitive Encyclopedia of the New York Mets' First Half-Century by David Ferry, Ed Kranepool (Foreword) 4.43 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2012 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ellery Street: Poems really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Painting Without a Brush 4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1991 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	He Speaks: Monologues for Men 4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2007	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	On the Way to the Island 4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1960 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Limits of Mortality: An Essay of Wordsworth's Major Poems 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by David Ferry (?)

“How long does a building stand before it falls?
How long does a contract last? How long will brothers

share the inheritance before they quarrel?
How long does hatred, for that matter, last?

Time after time the river has risen and flooded.
The insect leaves the cocoon to live but a minute.

How long is the eye able to look at the sun?
From the very beginning nothing at all has lasted.

See how the dead and the sleeping resemble each other.
Seen together, they are the image of death.

The simple man and the ruler resemble each other.
The face of the one will darken like that of the other.”
― David Ferry, The Epic of Gilgamesh

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“Gilgamesh wandered in the wilderness grieving over the death of Enkidu and weeping saying: “Enkidu has died. Must I die too? Must Gilgamesh be like that?” Gilgamesh felt the fear of it in his belly. He said to himself that he would seek the son of Ubartutu, Utnapishtim, he, the only one of men by means of whom he might find out how death could be avoided. He said to himself that he would hasten to him, the dangers of the journey notwithstanding.”
― David Ferry, Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse

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“The punishment should always fit the crime.
Let him who has performed an evil act

be punished for that act. Let not the flood
be brought down on the heads of all for what

one man has done; and he who has transgressed,
show pity to him, lest he be cut off

from all his fellows. Better that a lion
should come into the village and prey upon it,

taking a few, than that the flood drown all.
Better a wolf should find its ravening way

into the fold, devouring some, much better
than that the flood turn all that breathes to clay.

Better that famine starve a few of them
than that a harvest of waters obliterate all.

Better that Erra the plague god, better that he
take hold of some, seize them and bear them away

to the Underworld, than that the flood drown all.”
― David Ferry, Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse

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David Ferry’s Followers (9)

David Ferry

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