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Departures
His fourth collection of poetry. First trade edition after a limited.
- GenresPoetry
52 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
24 people want to read
About the author
Donald Justice
61 books24 followersDonald Justice was an American poet and teacher of writing. He graduated from the University of Miami and went on to teach for many years at Iowa Writers' Workshop, the nation's first graduate program in creative writing. Some of his students there included Mark Strand, Charles Wright, Will Schmitz and Jorie Graham. He also taught at Syracuse University, the University of California at Irvine, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Justice published thirteen collections of his poetry. The first collection, The Summer Anniversaries, was the winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize given by the Academy of American Poets in 1961; Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1991, and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1996.
His honors also included grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003. His Collected Poems was nominated for the National Book Award in 2004. Justice was also a National Book Award Finalist in 1961, 1974, and 1995.
Of Justice as teacher, his student and later colleague Marvin Bell said in a eulogy, “As a teacher, Don chose always to be on the side of the poem, defending it from half-baked attacks by students anxious to defend their own turf. While he had firm preferences in private, as a teacher Don defended all turfs. He had little use for poetic theory.”
Of Justice's accomplishments as a poet, his former student, the poet and critic Tad Richards, noted that, "Donald Justice is likely to be remembered as a poet who gave his age a quiet but compelling insight into loss and distance, and who set a standard for craftsmanship, attention to detail, and subtleties of rhythm."
Justice's work was the subject of the 1998 volume Certain Solitudes: On The Poetry of Donald Justice, which is a collection of essays edited by Dana Gioia and William Logan.
Justice published thirteen collections of his poetry. The first collection, The Summer Anniversaries, was the winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize given by the Academy of American Poets in 1961; Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1991, and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1996.
His honors also included grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003. His Collected Poems was nominated for the National Book Award in 2004. Justice was also a National Book Award Finalist in 1961, 1974, and 1995.
Of Justice as teacher, his student and later colleague Marvin Bell said in a eulogy, “As a teacher, Don chose always to be on the side of the poem, defending it from half-baked attacks by students anxious to defend their own turf. While he had firm preferences in private, as a teacher Don defended all turfs. He had little use for poetic theory.”
Of Justice's accomplishments as a poet, his former student, the poet and critic Tad Richards, noted that, "Donald Justice is likely to be remembered as a poet who gave his age a quiet but compelling insight into loss and distance, and who set a standard for craftsmanship, attention to detail, and subtleties of rhythm."
Justice's work was the subject of the 1998 volume Certain Solitudes: On The Poetry of Donald Justice, which is a collection of essays edited by Dana Gioia and William Logan.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 7, 2024
Justice had one of the finest ears in American poetry, and this collection, written midway through his long career, does not disappoint.
Though it includes many merely satisfactory poetic experiments, Departures also presents several examples of the kind of lyrical perfection he came to be known by, where the music of the poem feels effortless and not a single word or syllable misplaced.
The best of these, such as "On the Night of the Departure by Bus" are filled with a dreamlike stillness reminiscent of his contemporary Mark Strand.
"A passenger has lost his claim-check,
The brunette her barrette,
And I—I think that there are moths eating holes in my pockets,
That my place in line is evaporating,
That the moon is not the moon and the bus is not the bus."
Others, such as "Sonatina in Yellow" and "Absences" like so much of his poetry, are grounded in the objects and sounds of memory and childhood, and often return to the images of his early childhood in Florida, of palm trees, keyboards, piano lessons, and parents.
"It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.
There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,
Like the memory of scales descending the white keys
Of a childhood piano—outside the window, palms!
And the heavy head of the cereus, inclining,
Soon to let down its white or yellow-white."
In all, these poems weave together the past and the present, loss, sadness, celebration and dream, while always remaining thoroughly tethered to the social world and the sometimes awkward comforts of friends, lovers, and strangers that make a life.
Though it includes many merely satisfactory poetic experiments, Departures also presents several examples of the kind of lyrical perfection he came to be known by, where the music of the poem feels effortless and not a single word or syllable misplaced.
The best of these, such as "On the Night of the Departure by Bus" are filled with a dreamlike stillness reminiscent of his contemporary Mark Strand.
"A passenger has lost his claim-check,
The brunette her barrette,
And I—I think that there are moths eating holes in my pockets,
That my place in line is evaporating,
That the moon is not the moon and the bus is not the bus."
Others, such as "Sonatina in Yellow" and "Absences" like so much of his poetry, are grounded in the objects and sounds of memory and childhood, and often return to the images of his early childhood in Florida, of palm trees, keyboards, piano lessons, and parents.
"It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers.
There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,
Like the memory of scales descending the white keys
Of a childhood piano—outside the window, palms!
And the heavy head of the cereus, inclining,
Soon to let down its white or yellow-white."
In all, these poems weave together the past and the present, loss, sadness, celebration and dream, while always remaining thoroughly tethered to the social world and the sometimes awkward comforts of friends, lovers, and strangers that make a life.
January 2, 2018
"Portraits of the Sixties" is phenomenal. Some of the other poems (the homages, the personifications) are a little too workshoppy for my taste. Great opener ("ABC") as well. The aforementioned series of portraits has become a fast favorite, and one I'll be returning to.
August 16, 2025
Beautiful phrases in here, my favorite poems are “A Letter” and “On the Night of Departure by Bus.”
“After the overture, / The opera seemed brief.”
“After the overture, / The opera seemed brief.”
May 19, 2016
Barely giving this one a 2. Picked up on the recommendation of my poetry instructor, but I didn't hit it off with him. Maybe it was just this collection, but there's much better poetry out there.
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February 22, 2018811.54 J96d 1973
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews