Work, for the Night Is Coming

by Jared Carter

The Walt Whitman Award winning poetry collection by Jared Carter.

Genres: Poetry

47 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

His first published poems appeared in Indiana Sesquicentennial Poets in 1967. In 1980, his first book, Work, for the Night Is Coming, received the Walt Whitman Award. His second, After the Rain, received the Poets' Prize in 1994.
Subsequent collections have been Les Barricades Mysterieuse in 1999, Cross this Bridge at a Walk in 2006, and A Dance in the Street in 2012.
In 2014 his sixth book, Darkened Rooms of Summer: New and Selected Poems was published by the University of Nebraska Press, with an introduction by Ted Kooser.
His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Hudson Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and other journals in the U.S. and abroad.
He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and from the National Endowment for the Arts.
A recent introduction to his work is The Ties of the Railroad Tracks Home: The Poetry of Jared Carter by Goodreads Author Gilbert Wesley Purdy.

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book, again from the local library, won the Walt Whitman Award (to an American poet who had not yet published a full book of poetry) in 1980 (judged by Galway Kinnell). I had a lukewarm response to this book overall but I wouldn't be afraid to pick up one of Jared Carter's later books. These poems are located in the fictional home of Mississinewa County in Indiana, the poet's home state. There's a section called Tintypes, consisting of 3 poems, that's very reminiscent of Spoon River Anthology. Many of the other poems also center on characters of the town, some working in graveyards, carpenters, sign painters, even a witch who meets a gruesome end. The best of them are haunting, like "Watching by the Stream" in which the "walleyed people" develop another kind of sight, "watch the air about you as though light / were coming through the depths of your blood." And "Walking the Ties," about a homeless woman:

These are the sleeves she touched each night when she left
These are the dogs coming out of the shadows to join her
These are the ties of the railroad tracks home

However, as a whole, I was not moved. Which isn't terribly surprising for a first book. Again, I wouldn't hesitate to check a later book by him.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love books that are put together (ordered) well, and this one is just that. The poems seem to join hands from page to page. It also has wonderful, quiet lyric moments mixed with subtle narrative--and Carter has a knack for ending a poem in the perfect way.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

good poems, but not my thing.

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

jared carter shares my birthplace, and writes a lot about the area - IMO he is the hoosier born poet ever, and one of the finest living poets today.