Cherish: New and Selected Poems

by Steve Kowit

Steve Kowit's poetry has been described as a "memorable exhilaration, a singular concentration of language, and a flow of razor-sharp images springing irrepressibly from the author's humanity" (CHOICE). It is his humanity we celebrate in this, Steve's last collection. NEW AND SELECTED POEMS was receiving its final editorial touches by Steve when he passed away in April of 2015. Kowit--a poet, an editor, a teacher--was the 2007 winner of the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry for his collection THE FIRST NOBLE TRUTH and author of other books of poems, including LURID CONFESSIONS, THE DUMBBELL NEBULA, and The Gods of Rapture . He was also author of the influential creative writing workshop text In the Palm of Your The Poet's Portable Workshop . "How fine to have in in our hands . . . the lucid, voluptuous, exuberant poems of Steve Kowit." --Dorianne Laux

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2015

Reviews

[Norman Baxter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished a slow re-reading of this wonderful book of poetry. Kowit, who passed away last year, has a superlative gift for the perfect phrase; the one that evokes a complete set of emotions, a beautiful event, a poignant summation, a moral choice. I offer the following excerpt from his poem "The Poets Are At It Again" in memory of the college professor who didn't think much of my dismissal of T.S. Eliot, poetic master of the footnote.

[... But when I open the journal to read
in the very first poem the "the fibrillate air tracking the circles of breath
fractures the nuptual gloom to redeem the duplicitous scaffolds of time,"
I turn the page fast. & what on earth I ask does that next poet mean
to suggest when he speaks of "Noon's quasi-harmonic unmooring"?
& how in Christ's name is it "rife with the snows of derision"? Is the flesh,
as another contends, nothing less than "lamentation's endogenous shadow"?
"The draconian wind's vestibular chant," still another informs me,
"throbs like the tongues of a city of trumpeting plectra where orphans
of imminence jangle the serpentine dust." Huh? I am frankly nonplussed.
Is there something earlier on that I'd missed? On the following page
yet another insists "one must storm the architectonics of flesh wherein
filial trust & clyptatic departures are one, lest, taking wing, we shall all
inexplicable perish." Whoa! Clyptatic departures? I set the quarterly back
on the table, face down. Happily, tucked among the day's
overdue bills & solicitations for money is one of those little stapled,
junk-mail lingerie and summer wear catalogues: Irresistible minis of cotton,
silk & chiffon, cheeky peekaboo push-ups & lacy thongs.
I lean back with a sigh in that big sling chair by the window, to relish
those lyrical, unambiguous paeans to longing & romance & fervid
enchantment & grace. Pure poetry, page after page after ravishing page."]

And it gets better!