Selected Poems

by Jean Garrigue

Selected Poems is compiled from the best works in Jean Garrigue's eight published collections. It also includes some uncollected poems drawn from the archive of her manuscripts in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library.
From its beginning, Garrigue's poetry reveals a remarkable richness and originality of imagery combined with an emotional intensity approaching transcendence. Human love in all its dimensions is a continuing preoccupation of her work, yet her feeling for the natural world, and especially for animals, runs equally deep. Her later work moves outward to wider perspectives on travel, politics, art, and literature itself, while exploring the philosophical questions of permanence and change, the role of the artist in an indifferent world, and the struggle of the spirit with the fact of death. Garrigue's lyrical vein broadens into a long, meditative lyric, often fused with a richly detailed evocation of place, that recalls some of the greatest poems of her Romantic predecessors.

Genres: Poetry

194 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1992

About the author

Jean Garrigue (born Gertrude Louise Garrigus) was an American poet.

Reviews

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Discovered this poet in grad school. She's been totally overlooked and ignored (sigh), but her sense of detail is extraordinary. If you like the poems of Elizabeth Bishop, you'll like these.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think of that grave woman in the dark
There by the delicate stream at the pitch of moon,
Valor encompassed by the rare serene.
Difficult life has battered her and yet
With what magnificent strength she outstands that
No matter that the earth be dark and worn.
Might I learn, wasted and much torn,
From whence she gets the laughter of her kind.
Giving and blessing, it enkindles mind
And on the heart its wisdom without rancor fiery-earned
Bestows such light that all seems round
And brought to full, like our redemptive moon.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short story appeared in an anthology of American authors that I received in the late 80s-early 90s. It is so brilliant at depicting the true nature of love relationships versus more shallow ones. I always mentally refer to it ever since reading it in the early 90s. It’s a shame Jean died so young, and that her writing isn’t more well known.