Singing Yet

by Stan Rice

This is a vivid collection by the award-winning American poet, Stan Rice, selected from three earlier books together with a considerable body of new work. The poems in Singing Yet have an extraordinary range -- from the surreal stream of consciousness to simple, meditative lyrics -- but all share an authentic and readable voice.

'He brilliantly depicts a hallucinatory landscape of dangers, psychic and otherwise.' San Francisco Chronicle

'One of the pleasures of such a book is to see the concerns, sometimes even the precise words, that make up the continuity of a poet's sensibility, as well as the evolution both of his struggle with the demons and of his own talent.' New Orleans Times

Stan Rice has been Professor of English and Creative Writing, Chairman of the Creative Writing Department, and Assistant Director of the Poetry Centre at San Francisco State University. He now lives in New Orleans with his wife, the novelist Anne Rice.

Genres: Poetry

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 16, 1992

About the author

Stan Rice was an American poet and artist and husband of writer Anne Rice (married 1961). He was a Professor of English and Creative Writing at San Francisco State University and retired as Chairman of the Creative Writing Department in 1989. Stan Rice died from brain cancer and was survived by his wife, novelist Anne Rice and son, author Christopher Rice.

It was the death of the couple's first child, daughter Michele (1966-1972), at age six of leukemia, which sparked Stan Rice's becoming a published author. His first book of poems, based on her illness and death, was titled Some Lamb, and was published in 1975. He encouraged his wife to quit her work as a waitress, cook and theater usher in order to devote herself full time to her writing.

Both encouraged their son, Christopher, to write as well.

He is entombed in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.

Reviews

[Collin Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection I return to again and again. Stan Rice was a brilliant poet. This volume collects work from his out-of-print chapbooks and previous collections. He had a recognizable voice in poetry and his work was often an extension of his painting. "Thunder & Rain" is one of the most amazing poems ever written (and I mean that seriously).

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for Incanto – Some Lamb
By Stuart Rice

[E. G. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whiteboy

I. America
--Elegy
--The Skyjacker
--Up Against the Wall
--Fourth of July in the Rich Man's House
--America the Beautiful
--Looking at the Moon During Third Moonwalk
--3 a.m. Opening the Window
--Graffiti
--Whiteboy
--The Dogchain Gang

II. Life with Father
--The Feminine Principle
--Sonnet
--The Proposition
--Waiting in the Cafe
--Forgetting Her Birthday
--The Two Dreams
--Storming Out
--Poems and Marriage
--Getting Lost
--Double Solitaire
--First Xmas After Daughterdeath 1972

III. Poems
--Song
--The Words Once
--Widows
--The Old Woman
--I Ride the Flying Pig
--Nature Poems

Some Lamb

I. During
--Playing in the Yard
--Five Rhymes
--Making It Go Away
--Found
--Dying Goldfish
--Surviving
--Homecoming
--The 29th Month
--Michele Fair
--Testimonial
--The Last Supper
--In the Hospital Courtyard
--Blood
--Incanto
--Sonnet
--The Photographs
--Trying to Feel It
--In Debt
--Déjà Vu Again
--Of Nothing
--The Bones of Woe
--Eating It
--Mommie Swims
--The Engines
--Songfest
--Some Lamb

II. After
--Four Wolves
--The Sleep
--Singing Death
--Artist & Model
--Breaking the Silence
--Aesthetic Theory
--Anne's Curls
--Excellence of Excess
--Tragic Rabbit
--Dog
--Irrational Monologues
--Rearview
--Breakings
--Excess Is Ease
--The Dazzles
--Snakemarriage
--Advocating Melancholy
--Look!
--Cannibal
--Four Days in Another City
--How Keep Dark and Pattern Off

Body of Work

--American Rain
--Their Share
--Wreckage
--At the Movies
--Poem on Crawling into Bed: Bitterness
--The Elephant House
--History: Madness
--The Cry-bird Journey
--Tenderness
--What Happened When the Milk Came Out
--What Happened in the Hallway
--Thunder & Rain
--Of Heaven
--Metaphysical Shock While Watching a TV Cartoon
--Cycle
--Monkey Hill
--Texas Suite

New Poems (1983-1990)

--Slobtime
--The Tongue
--Gone Fishing
--Fear of Homosexual Rape
--Poem Following Discussion of Brain
--Pessimism: The Birds
--Jonathan (Samuel (Abner ) (Ibid and His "Last Words"
--The Iliad
--I Called the Cow
--He Who Waits
--The Palm Trees of Las Vegas
--The Scapegoat
--Madness of Chance
--Madness: Fullgrown
--The Rain of Reason
--Authority
--After Massacre
--Time in Tool
--Walking with My Son to the Creek in the Dark Which He Fears
--There It Is
--Is It Natural
--20 Gallon Aquarium
--To the Turns
--Note to Ezra
--The Doctrine of Perception as Animal Hunger
--Friends Like These
--Key to the Cow
--Looking Out
--Local Deity
--Ndaaya
--Icy Gravy
--"What Is Your Prediction?" "No One Will Know the Future."
--Emotions
--Deadletter I
--Deadletter II
--Sweetmeat
--The Fall
--The Literati

A Note About the Author
A Note on the Type

[Ashley Sasnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite poet. This book can be tricky b/c the loss of his daughter is routinely used as a thematic device to explore much of life's pain.