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Hindsight: Poems
A meditation on damage, aging, and injustice from a poet whose work “live[s] in a realm of classical purity” (Anthony Hecht).
Blending the personal and the political, the poems in Hindsight search for forms of the sacred in a time of torment. Some contemplate the shocks of COVID-19, others confront a politically torn nation. Each poem asks some version of the question, “What can be made of all this / grief.” Beneath theology pulses the private life. Warren investigates a personal past to weigh the moral meaning of experience. In “Hindsight,” the speaker discovers, “I could have / seen you better, I / know that now.” Whom have we hurt? What does it mean to be conscious? from “Such Times”
There were laws to be smashed, a country intent
on doing just that. We lived in such times.
Still, in Prokofiev’s piano sonata,
the notes kept rising like a vine on a trellis.
And that, too, was true. There was a way
in which it was true. But did
we hear?
Blending the personal and the political, the poems in Hindsight search for forms of the sacred in a time of torment. Some contemplate the shocks of COVID-19, others confront a politically torn nation. Each poem asks some version of the question, “What can be made of all this / grief.” Beneath theology pulses the private life. Warren investigates a personal past to weigh the moral meaning of experience. In “Hindsight,” the speaker discovers, “I could have / seen you better, I / know that now.” Whom have we hurt? What does it mean to be conscious? from “Such Times”
There were laws to be smashed, a country intent
on doing just that. We lived in such times.
Still, in Prokofiev’s piano sonata,
the notes kept rising like a vine on a trellis.
And that, too, was true. There was a way
in which it was true. But did
we hear?
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Hardcover
Published September 23, 2025
3 people are currently reading
2175 people want to read
About the author
Rosanna Warren
42 books18 followersOn July 27, 1953, Rosanna Warren was born in Fairfield, Connecticut. She studied painting at Yale University, where she graduated in 1976, and an MA in 1980 from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
She is the author of Ghost in a Red Hat (W.W. Norton, 2011); Departure (2003); Stained Glass (1993), which was named the Lamont Poetry Selection by the Academy of American Poets; Each Leaf Shines Separate (1984); and Snow Day (1981).
She has also published a translation of Euripides’s Suppliant Women (with Stephen Scully; Oxford, 1995), a book of literary criticism, Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry (W.W. Norton, 2008), and has edited several books, including The Art of Translation: Voices from the Field (Northeastern, 1989).
Her awards include the Pushcart Prize, the Award of Merit in Poetry and the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the May Sarton Prize, the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, the Ingram Merrill Grant for Poetry, a Lila Wallace Readers Digest Award, the Nation/“Discovery” Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Warren served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005. In the fall of 2000, she was The New York Times Resident in Literature at the American Academy in Rome.
She is a contributing editor of Seneca Review and the poetry editor of Daedalus. She was the Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. She is a professor at The Committee of Social Thought at the University of Chicago and lives in Chicago, IL.
She is the author of Ghost in a Red Hat (W.W. Norton, 2011); Departure (2003); Stained Glass (1993), which was named the Lamont Poetry Selection by the Academy of American Poets; Each Leaf Shines Separate (1984); and Snow Day (1981).
She has also published a translation of Euripides’s Suppliant Women (with Stephen Scully; Oxford, 1995), a book of literary criticism, Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry (W.W. Norton, 2008), and has edited several books, including The Art of Translation: Voices from the Field (Northeastern, 1989).
Her awards include the Pushcart Prize, the Award of Merit in Poetry and the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the May Sarton Prize, the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, the Ingram Merrill Grant for Poetry, a Lila Wallace Readers Digest Award, the Nation/“Discovery” Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Warren served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005. In the fall of 2000, she was The New York Times Resident in Literature at the American Academy in Rome.
She is a contributing editor of Seneca Review and the poetry editor of Daedalus. She was the Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. She is a professor at The Committee of Social Thought at the University of Chicago and lives in Chicago, IL.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 6, 2025
Well crafted contemplative and lovely
November 29, 2025
I was excited to read this after winning it in a Goodreads giveaway, especially since I haven’t really ventured into poetry before. While the author clearly has a talent for crafting beautiful language, I sometimes felt a bit lost. It’s well written, just ultimately not my cup of tea.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews