,
David Ferry

David Ferry’s Followers (8)

member photo
member photo
member photo
member photo
member photo
member photo
member photo
member photo

David Ferry


Born
in Orange, New Jersey, The United States
March 05, 1924

Died
November 05, 2023

Genre


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

Average rating: 3.87 · 3,590 ratings · 506 reviews · 64 distinct worksSimilar authors
Bewilderment: New Poems and...

3.87 avg rating — 317 ratings — published 2012 — 7 editions
Rate this book
Clear rating
Of No Country I Know: New a...

4.31 avg rating — 48 ratings — published 1999 — 4 editions
Rate this book
Clear rating
Dwelling Places: Poems and ...

4.40 avg rating — 20 ratings — published 1993 — 4 editions
Rate this book
Clear rating
Strangers: A Book of Poems

3.75 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 1983 — 3 editions
Rate this book
Clear rating
Total Mets: The Definitive ...

by
4.43 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2012 — 2 editions
Rate this book
Clear rating
Ellery Street: Poems

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 4 ratings2 editions
Rate this book
Clear rating
Painting Without a Brush

4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1991 — 7 editions
Rate this book
Clear rating
He Speaks: Monologues for Men

4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2007
Rate this book
Clear rating
On the Way to the Island

4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1960 — 5 editions
Rate this book
Clear rating
ECG in Ten Days

3.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2006
Rate this book
Clear rating
More books by David Ferry…
Quotes by David Ferry  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“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.”
David Ferry, The Epic of Gilgamesh

“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, Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse

“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