Shadow of Heaven: Poems

by Ellen Bryant Voigt

Shortlisted for the 2002 National Book Award in Poetry. Following her stringent and much-acclaimed Kyrie , finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Ellen Bryant Voigt now examines more intimately the ordeals and exaltations of everyday life. Nature, both fierce and benign, infuses this collection, furthering "an art at once ravishing and stern and deeply human" (American Academy of Arts and Letters).

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Sidik Fofana]

SIX WORD REVIEW: A nice rinse of poetic prose.

[H]

"The summer field, sun-fed, mutable,/ has its many tasks; the winter field/ becomes its adjective" (22)

"thousand last vast blue cloud-blemished skies" (28)

"below the pines in the soft trash of the forest floor" (34)

"The slim, successive cars like vertebrae" (38)

"wrinkle coming toward me in the grass-- no" (49)

"through perfected scorn, cruising the porch where I sat/ hullings in a china bowl-- sometimes/ the world looks back" (59)

"I think thinking is not/ the body's job/ that the body gets in the way" (60)

"mine/ is the one on the left,/ enlarged by superstition/ and music, like my father's more/ myopic eye./ Detachment is my friend's/ discovery, what he commends/ against despair...And the years bring their own correction:/ to see a thing/ one has to push it away" (61)

"clusters of white blossoms/ with yellow throats" (62)

"taking a turn in the light of our attention, T-shirt" (82)

"I'm bringing you a sun, a children's choir, host/ of transient voices, first bright/ splash in the gray exhausted world, a feast/ of the dooryard flower we call butter-and-egg" (87)

[Emily M]

This spring, I stopped by to visit my favorite English professor before he retired, and he gifted me several books, including this poetry compilation, when we said goodbye. I've been savoring these poems, a few at a time, during the kids' orchestra rehearsals. I'm not always fond of contemporary poetry, and this is the first Voigt I've read (unless we read her in a modern American lit class 18 years ago, and I'd forgotten). I found this collection accessible and relatable. I found myself gasping with wonder at a few exquisite phrases, and some of her images have been lingering with me for weeks. I would read more of her work.

[Keeley]

Wide-ranging collection of verse including some translations from classical poetry. Worth a read.

[Jason]

Exquisite, gorgeous, knockout poems. The precision of attention and description, coupled with emotional richness/restraint. And the elegy for Larry Levis gutted me.

[Jeremy]

“Largesse” / “Apple Tree” / “Winter Field” / “The Others” / “Practice” / “Lesson” / “The Art of Distance: 6” / “Long Marriage” / “Last Letter”

[Lida]

Wow! I read every poem in this book two or three times just to absorb them more fully.

[Maughn Gregory]

Here's a poet I follow.

[Cee Spind]

I started this and wasn't feeling it, but picked it up a week later and wondered where my head was the previous week. Like the couplets.

[Nicole]

Really 3.5

Really enjoyed