Selected Poems

by Barbara Guest

A collection of the poets works spanning her forty year career demonstrates how the writer has evolved to incorporate poetic trends and movements of the times

Genres: Poetry

198 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Barbara Guest, née Barbara Ann Pinson (September 6, 1920 – February 15, 2006), was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry.[1] Guest wrote more than 15 books of poetry spanning sixty years of writing. In 1999, she was awarded the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Poetry Society of America. Guest also wrote art criticism, essays, and plays. Her collages appeared on the covers of several of her books of poetry. She was also well known for her biography of the poet H.D., Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World (1984).

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Selected Poems brings together a selection of poems from Poems: The Location of Things, Archaics, The Open Skies , The Blue Stairs , Moscow Mansions , The Countess from Minneapolis , The Türler Losses , Fair Realism , Defensive Rapture ...

From Poems: The Location of Things, Archaics, The Open Skies ...

Old Thing

We have escaped
from that pale refrigerator

you wrote about

Here

amid the wild woodbine landscapes
wearing a paper hat

I recollect

the idols
in those frozen tubs

secluded by buttresses

when the Church of

Our Lady cried Enough

and we were banished

Sighing

strangers
we are

the last even breath

poets

Yet the funicular
was tied by a rope

It could only cry
looking down

that midnight hill

My lights are
bright
the walk is
irregular

your initials
are carved on the sill.

Mon Ami!

the funicular
has a knife

in its side

Ah allow these nightingales to nurse us

- History, for Frank O'Hara, pg. 19-20

From The Blue Stairs ...

The most that can be said
for following the parade
is that the Head was red.

Liking grotesque the architect
went along with it,
the balloons and the bellies
enlarged.

He had a craze for size,
so he said.

Looking at it from the sidelines
we weren't so amused
as chilled by the snow wind,
our feet getting smaller
in unadaptable leather

our eyes formed truly gigantic tears

we dropped when the last
soldier had passed and the confetti
was buried in the ash can.

It was quite a day. I brought home
an unopened poem. It should grow
in the kitchen near the stove
if I can squeeze out of my eyes
enough water. Water.

- Parade's End, pg. 37

From Moscow Mansions ...

A dollop is dolloping
her a scoop is pursuing
flee vain ignots Ho
coriander darks thimble blues
red okays adorn her
buzz green circles in flight
or submergence? Giddy
mishaps of blackness make
stinging clouds what!
a fraught climate
what natural c/o abnormal
loquaciousness the
Poetess riddled
her asterisk
genial! as space

- The Poetess, after Miró, pg. 78

From The Countess from Minneapolis ...

Separations begin with placement
that black organized the ochre
both earth colours,

Quietly the blanket assumes its shapes
as the grey day loops along leaving
an edge (turned like leaves into something else),

Absolutes simmer as primary colours
and everyone gropes toward black
where it is believed the strength lingers.

I make a sketch from your window
the rain so prominent earlier
now hesitates and retreats,

We find bicycles natural
under this sky composed of notes,

Then ribbons, they make noises
rushing up and down the depots
at the blue exchanging
its web for a highway.

Quarters the quartets
are really bricks and we are
careful to replace them
until they are truly quartets.

- River Road Studio, pg. 83

From The Türler Losses ...

Peen t Pee n t
the shriek tenses when that shadow passes
"and midnight all a glimmer"

The crossed panes keep the shadow
peent is heard
in scraps against dawn
listen

wind scraps

grass shiver

field tree profile

Peen t

take oath upon't

Nighthawk gothic

- Nighthawk, pg. 94

From Fair Realism ...

Cloud fields change into furniture
furniture metamorphosizes into fields
an emphasis falls on reality.

"It snowed toward morning," a barcarole
the words stretched severely

silhouettes they arrived in trenchant cut
the face of lilies...


I was envious of fair realism.

I desired sunrise to revise itself
as apparition, majestic in evocativeness,
two fountains traced nearby on a lawn....

you recall treatments
of 'being' and 'nothingness'
illuminations apt
to appear from variable directions -
they are orderly as motors
floating on the waterway,

so silence is pictorial
when silence is real.


The wall is more real than shadow
or that letter composed of calligraphy
each vowel replaces a wall

a costume taken from space
donated by walls....


These metaphors may be apprehended after
they have brought their dogs and cats
born on roads near willows,

willows are not real trees
they entangle us in looseness,
the natural world spins in green.

A column chosen from distance
mounts into the sky while the font
is classical,

they will destroy the disturbed font
as it enters modernity and is rare....


The necessary idealizing of your reality
is part of the search, the journey
where two figures embrace

This house was drawn for them
it looks like a real house
perhaps they will move in today

into ephemeral dusk and
move out of that into night
selective night with trees,


The darkened copies of all trees.

- An Emphasis Falls On Reality, pg. 123-125

From Defensive Rapture ...

Width of a cube spans defensive rapture
cube from blocks of liquid theme
phantom of lily stark
in running rooms.

adoration of hut performs a clear function
allusive column extending dust
protective screen the red
objects pavilion.

deep layered in tradition moonlight
folkloric pleads the rakish
sooted idiom
supernatural diadem.

stilled grain of equinox
turbulence the domicile
host robed arm white
crackled motives.

sensitive timbre with complex
astral sign open tent hermetic
toss of sand swan reeds
torrents of uneveness.

surround a lusted fabric
hut sequence modal shy
as verdigris hallow force
massive intimacy.

slant fuse the wived
mosaic a chamber astrakhan
amorous welding
the sober descant.

turns in the mind bathes
the rapture bone a guardian
ploy indolent lighted
strew of doubt.

commends internal habitude
bush the roof
day stare gliding
double measures.

qualms the weights of night
medusae raft clothed sky
radiant strike the oars
skim cirrus.

evolve a fable husk
aged silkiness the roan
planet mowed like ears
beaded grip.

suppose the hooded grass
numb moat alum trench a solemn
glaze the sexual estuary
floats an edge.

- Defensive Rapture, pg. 160-162

[Keifer May · Rating 4 out of 5]

To knock this a star seems so unfair, but Good Reads won't let me give half a star.

Reading this book from cover to cover has given me a new obsession with the poetics of Guest. The waves and film screens that recur as images and themes. The use of the visual caesura and the disruption of line (which is often broken to reflect the waves and unrealized breaking of the tide). Guest was pretty obviously influenced with Stein's folding and pleating of time or a moment in her earlier work and the "painterly" influences reflect that. However, I believe that this pleating of time hasn't been abandoned--it has merely been enhanced by a further investigation of language as a problematic object, rather than a constellation of ideas that map readily.

When this book (and Guest) is on and you tap in to the quiet and inhabit one of the poems, this book astounds. Sometimes the rigor and strength felt too intense and took me out of the experience. But a wonderful book that I'm glad I picked up.

[Charlotte Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Guest is the only female poet in the first generation of the New York School, I wanted this to be better. Her abstract language is usually meaningless and hard to follow with very little attention to form and theme.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given that Guest is a major poet, the 5 stars reflects the beauty of the book itself, the wisdom and elegance of the selection.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a link to Barbara Guest reading her poem "Saving Tallow":

http://mediamogul.seas.upenn.edu/penn...

[Mills College Library]

811.54 G936s 1995

[Rodney Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

FABULOUS