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The Miraculous Season: Selected Poems
A revelatory new collection of work by V. R. "Bunny" Lang, an eccentric, thrilling American poet revived from oblivion. The collection includes work from across Lang's inimitable career, including many never-before-published poems.
V. R. "Bunny" Lang was the best friend of Frank O'Hara and a central figure in the lively Harvard literary scene of the early 1950s, out of which such very different writers as John Ashbery, Alison Lurie, Edward Gorey, and Robert Creeley emerged. Lang's work was startling, strange, playful, caustic, alarming, and beautiful, with a theatrical turn that grew out of her involvement with the Poets' Theatre. The Miraculous Season, edited by the scholar and writer Rosa Campbell, offers a new, expanded gathering of Lang's poetry, including previously unpublished work drawn from her archives. Campbell's introduction tells the story of Lang's fascinating life and her early death, making it clear how and why her work belongs in the canon of twentieth-century American poetry.
V. R. "Bunny" Lang was the best friend of Frank O'Hara and a central figure in the lively Harvard literary scene of the early 1950s, out of which such very different writers as John Ashbery, Alison Lurie, Edward Gorey, and Robert Creeley emerged. Lang's work was startling, strange, playful, caustic, alarming, and beautiful, with a theatrical turn that grew out of her involvement with the Poets' Theatre. The Miraculous Season, edited by the scholar and writer Rosa Campbell, offers a new, expanded gathering of Lang's poetry, including previously unpublished work drawn from her archives. Campbell's introduction tells the story of Lang's fascinating life and her early death, making it clear how and why her work belongs in the canon of twentieth-century American poetry.
- GenresPoetry
223 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 28, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 10, 2024
Not knowing much about her, this reads like the unstructured ramblings of a creative and damaged person, often with startling imagery, occasionally blasting into memorable lyrical intensity; but often just rambling.
June 14, 2025
This really feels like the missing voice from the first generation of the New York School - camp and personable like O'Hara and Koch, surreal like Guest and Ashbery, brilliant (and totally Lang) throughout. Veers from Norns to chorus girls, high melodrama to slapstick - just wonderful. I hope this collection has earnt Lang a spot in the New York School canon.
Eurydice to Orpheus
I wanted him to look at me.
It meant the end of the world, but I wanted it,
It meant the sky’s drop and the earth’s derision,
Swallowing me from the light forever, but I willed him
To look at me and lose me, lest he forget to mourn me,
Lest he hold me ever less than that moment, a terror,
A desolation, not anything else again ever mattering.
Poem (“If you have passed unharmed through the miraculous season”)
If you have passed unharmed through the miraculous season,
What now when the year runs out with chattering of teeth?
The embroidery unfinished, the pile of unmailed letters,
The echo in the empty well, what can they tell you?
The spider in the grate, the empty, indifferent weather
May be a clue. But better not to know.
Poem (“You kill me”)
You kill me. Yes you do.
I know no one else who’d
Buy a sparrow(I
Didn’t even know they sold sparrows)
Just to feed it watermelon
And in public, too.
Every afternoon I think of you
Out there, flushed and fair
Scraping the exhausted rind with a spoon.
Every day! All winter.
Eurydice to Orpheus
I wanted him to look at me.
It meant the end of the world, but I wanted it,
It meant the sky’s drop and the earth’s derision,
Swallowing me from the light forever, but I willed him
To look at me and lose me, lest he forget to mourn me,
Lest he hold me ever less than that moment, a terror,
A desolation, not anything else again ever mattering.
Poem (“If you have passed unharmed through the miraculous season”)
If you have passed unharmed through the miraculous season,
What now when the year runs out with chattering of teeth?
The embroidery unfinished, the pile of unmailed letters,
The echo in the empty well, what can they tell you?
The spider in the grate, the empty, indifferent weather
May be a clue. But better not to know.
Poem (“You kill me”)
You kill me. Yes you do.
I know no one else who’d
Buy a sparrow(I
Didn’t even know they sold sparrows)
Just to feed it watermelon
And in public, too.
Every afternoon I think of you
Out there, flushed and fair
Scraping the exhausted rind with a spoon.
Every day! All winter.
February 20, 2025
diva down!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews