Five Seasons of Obsession: New and Selected Poems

by Ned O'Gorman, Ned Rorem (Introduction)

Coming nearly 30 years after Ned O'Gorman's last major collection of poems, "Five Seasons of Obsession" marks the reemergence of an important and distinctive voice in American poetry. With the selection of his first collection of poems as the winner of the 1958 Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize, a distinguished panel of judges heralded "a new talent of the first magnitude." The "lyric power, intensity of feeling, fine intelligence" those judges singled out for praise, the "mastery of language and...joyous vitality in the use of it" continue to be hallmarks of Ned O'Gorman's poetry, and are found in abundance in this collection of new and selected poems. "Ned O'Gorman is a truly original poet, whose "New and Selected" is full of continuing brio and surprise. There is an excellent variety O'Gorman can be lyrically comic, as in "Webbed, Yellow-Billed, and Aquamarine," can draw a clear and searing portrait in "To the Memory of Lydia Hoffman," or write with a compelling, runaway mysteriousness in such a poem as "The Eyes of Shetland Ponies." The newer poems in this fine book balance between the strongly sensual and a vision that knows "we are never finished with unknowing."--Richard Wilbur "A poet of the nature and the body, some of the most beautiful, intelligent poems about love and its loss"--Flannery O'Connor
Introduction by Ned Rorem.
6 x 9 in.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Edward Charles O'Gorman was born on September 26, 1929 in New York City. He spent most of his early life in Southport, Connecticut, and Bradford, Vermont. In 1950, he graduated from St. Michael's College in Vermont and later received an M.A. from Columbia University.

His poetry earned him Guggenheim Fellowships in 1956 and 1962 and in 1958 he won the Lamont Poetry Award for his collection of poems, The Night of the Hammer.

He was the literary editor of the Catholic magazine Jubilee from 1962 to 1965. He was appointed by the U.S. State Department to be the American studies specialist in Chile, Argentina and Brazil in 1965. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. He later received the Rothko Chapel Award for Commitment to Truth and Freedom.

In July 1966, he arrived in Harlem and worked that summer as a volunteer teacher in a Head Start program. The children's library he started two months later gradually became a tuition-free school known as The Children's Storefront, welcoming all children living in the area.

After losing a dispute over succession at the Storefront, he founded the Ricardo O'Gorman Garden and Center for Resources in the Humanities which opened in 1998 with the collaboration of two teachers from the original school. The Center, which O'Gorman continued to direct, is located on West 129th Street in New York City.

O'Gorman also taught at Brooklyn College, the New School, and Manhattan College. He wrote six books of poetry, five books of prose, and numerous articles and poetry published in various magazines.

He died of pancreatic cancer at his Manhattan home on March 7, 2014, at the age of eighty-four.