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Praise
Former Poet Laureate Robert Hass 1979's Praise, the writers second volume of poetry.
68 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
17 people are currently reading
1590 people want to read
About the author
Robert Hass
120 books224 followersRobert Hass was born in San Francisco and lives in Berkeley, California, where he teaches at the University of California. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. A MacArthur Fellow and a two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, he has published poems, literary essays, and translations. He is married to the poet Brenda Hillman.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
July 17, 2019
By the way, speaking of praise: in spite of the fact that Robert Hass merits much of it, for the clarity, the immediacy, the trenchant images, and the thoughfulness of his verse, I still find myself unwilling to grant him my love—as I love Donne, Keats, Mew, O'Hara, and James Wright—because I sense, behind that accomplished verse, a self slipping away, determinedly withholding itself from the reader. One of the reasons I like the book Praise so much—in addition to its astonishing facility—is that behind all its artistry I glimpse here a little more of that fleeing self, and sense that Hass has begun to consider how poetry, how life—this naming, this analogizing, this signifying—informs the nature of the self and reconciles the memories of loss and desire.
Hass' virtues, well represented in his previous book Field Guide, are here: the precise classification of the external world, the brilliant zen imagery, the contemplative distance. But something else has been added too: the ability to slip from one tone—even one poetic form-- into another, with a breath-taking seamlessness unequaled by anyone but Ashbery. Still, behind these changes there is more than mere chameleon behavior. A process is being perfected here—a process identical to the transformation of the self—which unites paean with elegy into one great mournful hymn of praise.
A lot of the best things in this book are found in longer works, but here are two shorter poems—both about the act of naming, how it both evokes and engenders memory—which reflect Hass' central concerns.
Child Naming Flowers
When old crones wandered in the woods,
I was the hero on the hill
in clear sunlight.
Death's hounds feared me.
Smell of wild fennel,
high loft of sweet fruit high in the branches
of the flowering plum.
Then I am cast down
into the terror of childhood,
into the mirror and the greasy knives,
the dark
woodpile under the fig trees
in the dark.
It is only
the malice of voices, the old horror
that is nothing, parents
quarreling, somebody
drunk.
I don't know how we survive it.
On this sunny morning
in my life as an adult, I am looking
at one clear pure peach
in a painting by Georgia O'Keefe.
It is all the fullness that there is
in light. A towhee scratches in the leaves
outside my open door.
He always does.
A moment ago I felt so sick
and so cold
I could hardly move.
Picking Blackberries with a Friend Who Has Been Reading Jacques Lacan
August is dust here. Drought
stuns the road,
but juice gathers in the berries.
We pick them in the hot
slow-motion of midmorning.
Charlie is exclaiming:
for him it is twenty years ago
and raspberries and Vermont.
We have stopped talking
about L'Histoire de la vérité,
about subject and object
and the mediation of desire.
Our ears are stoppered
in the bee-hum. And Charlie,
laughing wonderfully,
beard stained purple
by the word juice,
goes to get a bigger pot.
Read
July 19, 2018Back in the decade (read: 70s), this book was all-that with the poetry crowd. This Has guy was an up-and-comer. Now he's a patriarch of sorts in the poetry world, one of those guys the current writers like to praise (heh) or secretly (and not-so) consider "yesterday's news."
As a classic of poetry, though, it should be read, I think, and you certainly won't be disappointed so much. No. I don't think so.
Example poem:
Heroic Simile
When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai
in the gray rain,
in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty,
he fell straight as a pine, he fell
as Ajax fell in Homer
in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge
the woodsman returned for two days
to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing
and on the third day he brought his uncle.
They stacked logs in the resinous air,
hacking the small limbs off,
tying those bundles separately.
The slabs near the root
were quartered and still they were awkwardly large;
the logs from midtree they halved:
ten bundles and four great piles of fragrant wood,
moons and quarter moons and half moons
ridged by the saw’s tooth.
The woodsman and the old man his uncle
are standing in midforest
on a floor of pine silt and spring mud.
They have stopped working
because they are tired and because
I have imagined no pack animal
or primitive wagon. They are too canny
to call in neighbors and come home
with a few logs after three days’ work.
They are waiting for me to do something
or for the overseer of the Great Lord
to come and arrest them.
How patient they are!
The old man smokes a pipe and spits.
The young man is thinking he would be rich
if he were already rich and had a mule.
Ten days of hauling
and on the seventh day they’ll probably
be caught, go home empty-handed
or worse. I don’t know
whether they’re Japanese or Mycenaean
and there’s nothing I can do.
The path from here to that village
is not translated. A hero, dying,
gives off stillness to the air.
A man and a woman walk from the movies
to the house in the silence of separate fidelities.
There are limits to imagination.
As a classic of poetry, though, it should be read, I think, and you certainly won't be disappointed so much. No. I don't think so.
Example poem:
Heroic Simile
When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai
in the gray rain,
in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty,
he fell straight as a pine, he fell
as Ajax fell in Homer
in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge
the woodsman returned for two days
to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing
and on the third day he brought his uncle.
They stacked logs in the resinous air,
hacking the small limbs off,
tying those bundles separately.
The slabs near the root
were quartered and still they were awkwardly large;
the logs from midtree they halved:
ten bundles and four great piles of fragrant wood,
moons and quarter moons and half moons
ridged by the saw’s tooth.
The woodsman and the old man his uncle
are standing in midforest
on a floor of pine silt and spring mud.
They have stopped working
because they are tired and because
I have imagined no pack animal
or primitive wagon. They are too canny
to call in neighbors and come home
with a few logs after three days’ work.
They are waiting for me to do something
or for the overseer of the Great Lord
to come and arrest them.
How patient they are!
The old man smokes a pipe and spits.
The young man is thinking he would be rich
if he were already rich and had a mule.
Ten days of hauling
and on the seventh day they’ll probably
be caught, go home empty-handed
or worse. I don’t know
whether they’re Japanese or Mycenaean
and there’s nothing I can do.
The path from here to that village
is not translated. A hero, dying,
gives off stillness to the air.
A man and a woman walk from the movies
to the house in the silence of separate fidelities.
There are limits to imagination.
May 11, 2007
This is one of my favorite books of poetry written in the last thirty years. I'm mentioning it on here because it's been such a useful tool for me as a writer. It includes some really famous poems, such as "Meditation at Lagunitas." That, you can find online here:
http://www.diacenter.org/prg/poetry/8...
It's a sort of elegy to language, with a few jabs at deconstructionism, all mixed with a heavy dose of lyrical beauty....
But there are other poems in the book that I continually return to when I am hard up for a poetic idea, or poetic language. Hass has this casual sentence structure that, if you mimic it, allows you to talk about complicated ideas in manageable language. One example, from "The Beginning of September," is:
The child is looking in the mirror.
His head falls to one side, his shoulders slump.
He is practicing sadness.
Not a brilliant passage, but, it's simple in its observation, and complex, I think, in what it chooses to observe.
http://www.diacenter.org/prg/poetry/8...
It's a sort of elegy to language, with a few jabs at deconstructionism, all mixed with a heavy dose of lyrical beauty....
But there are other poems in the book that I continually return to when I am hard up for a poetic idea, or poetic language. Hass has this casual sentence structure that, if you mimic it, allows you to talk about complicated ideas in manageable language. One example, from "The Beginning of September," is:
The child is looking in the mirror.
His head falls to one side, his shoulders slump.
He is practicing sadness.
Not a brilliant passage, but, it's simple in its observation, and complex, I think, in what it chooses to observe.
April 14, 2008
I've also been reading from Hass's book of essays recently, Twentieth Century Pleasures, and it is interesting for me to think of how these poems of "praise" coincide with his idea of the poet as creator. There is in these poems a sensitivity to the role of language not just as a medium, but a possibly successful medium.
July 30, 2017
The longer pieces "The Beginning of September" and "Songs to Survive the Summer" were the core of this book to me. Still interested in reading my copy of "Field Guide," though I felt lukewarmly about this book. Felt it really breathe in the longer poems, which flowed evenly between narrative and ode. Emma wants the cover image as a tattoo.
February 7, 2017
Beautiful, touching.
January 17, 2022
I think this is the first time I read a poetry collection in its full over two or three days -- I couldn't put it down. There is a cohesion of theme and idea, and development of it, over the course of these poems. Also, I found the poems as a whole achieving a balance of abstraction and strangeness, on the one hand, and particular images and understandable language, on the other hand. An issue I have with some modern poetry is that it is just too abstract and strange, so that no matter how hard I try and pause to untangle meaning, I get very little. Reading these poems required a lot of effort, but this effort revealed greater meaning; it was a fulfilling and engaging experience.
The main theme or idea found across the poems is the diverse, sublime, and sometimes dangerous roles of imagination and representation of reality, in our individual lives and humanity or culture. We may understand imagination as our capacity to represent objects and events that are spatially or temporally distant, or that never existed. Imagination enables for us the most sublime of experiences; objects and events can emerge in perfected forms, which seem to be impossible to find in real life. But also real life offers experiences of aesthetic and sensory intensity that no imagined object could ever achieve.
Hass shows how real life experience and imagination often bleed into one another. Imagination gives us visions and ideas that may be embodied in perceptual situations. This can be dangerous (e.g., imaginations about certain social groups can lead to discrimination), or relieving and life-saving (e.g., imaginations can make situations beautiful and relieving). The most intense and delightful perceptual experiences are possible insofar as they call forth past experiences or fantasies; the imagination does this work. When we encounter situations via art -- when we look at a painting or read a story or poem -- this is analogous to our imagining something. Art supplies us ways of imagining things in our lives; this is extremely powerful and can likewise be dangerous or life-saving.
My favorite poems in this collection, after my first read, are "Meditation at Lagunitas," "The Image," "Santa Lucia," "Child Naming Flowers," and "Songs to Survive the Summer." I tried to find extracts, to quote and give examples; but whenever I found a candidate bit, I see that it doesn't work out reading it in isolation. The heft and wonder of any of these lines requires its being situated in its full poem. So here's one of the poems
I can't wait to reread these.
The main theme or idea found across the poems is the diverse, sublime, and sometimes dangerous roles of imagination and representation of reality, in our individual lives and humanity or culture. We may understand imagination as our capacity to represent objects and events that are spatially or temporally distant, or that never existed. Imagination enables for us the most sublime of experiences; objects and events can emerge in perfected forms, which seem to be impossible to find in real life. But also real life offers experiences of aesthetic and sensory intensity that no imagined object could ever achieve.
Hass shows how real life experience and imagination often bleed into one another. Imagination gives us visions and ideas that may be embodied in perceptual situations. This can be dangerous (e.g., imaginations about certain social groups can lead to discrimination), or relieving and life-saving (e.g., imaginations can make situations beautiful and relieving). The most intense and delightful perceptual experiences are possible insofar as they call forth past experiences or fantasies; the imagination does this work. When we encounter situations via art -- when we look at a painting or read a story or poem -- this is analogous to our imagining something. Art supplies us ways of imagining things in our lives; this is extremely powerful and can likewise be dangerous or life-saving.
My favorite poems in this collection, after my first read, are "Meditation at Lagunitas," "The Image," "Santa Lucia," "Child Naming Flowers," and "Songs to Survive the Summer." I tried to find extracts, to quote and give examples; but whenever I found a candidate bit, I see that it doesn't work out reading it in isolation. The heft and wonder of any of these lines requires its being situated in its full poem. So here's one of the poems
I can't wait to reread these.
Read
September 7, 2011Yes.
I love this book for its sparing language. I mean, here are some truly difficult, dark, if hopeful, poems, carried by the most delicate, pared down lines. Also, the collection is full of exploratory form / break from standard.
Several of the poems seem to have an almost Japanese aesthetic, or a sort of leaping Bly would appreciate, as in "The Yellow Bicycle":
"The woman I love is greedy,
but she refuses greed.
She walks so straightly,
when I ask her what she wants,
she says, 'A yellow bicycle.'"
But the poem doesn't stay there... it goes many places. And comes back.
Thanks for the book, Joel!
I love this book for its sparing language. I mean, here are some truly difficult, dark, if hopeful, poems, carried by the most delicate, pared down lines. Also, the collection is full of exploratory form / break from standard.
Several of the poems seem to have an almost Japanese aesthetic, or a sort of leaping Bly would appreciate, as in "The Yellow Bicycle":
"The woman I love is greedy,
but she refuses greed.
She walks so straightly,
when I ask her what she wants,
she says, 'A yellow bicycle.'"
But the poem doesn't stay there... it goes many places. And comes back.
Thanks for the book, Joel!
February 22, 2022
“We are the song bewildering sound, half death takes its own time pleasure and half pain singing.”
I’ve never read poetry on its own as a whole and for the first time, I’m so glad I did. This book described feelings in ways I never thought of, experiences, stories and all of them are stored in this small amount of pages. I am so in love.
August 17, 2018
What a beauty.
May 11, 2024
Blackberry blackberry blackberry
December 1, 2022
blackberry blackberry blackberry, the vaginal leaves of old marigolds, sourdough bread in san francisco, imagining january and the beach
November 26, 2009
I first read Praise, the second book of poems published by Hass, a decade or so ago. What always stayed with me from the first reading was the half-dozen italicized lines that began section one, “We asked the captain what course / of action he proposed to take toward / a beast so large, terrifying, and / unpredictable. He hesitated to / answer, and then said judiciously: / ‘I think I shall praise it.’” When I recently picked it up to get the wording precisely right for “I think I shall praise it” I dipped into the rest of the collection, read a few lines here and there, impressed, went back to the start and read it all the way through again. These are wonderful poems, beautiful, puzzling and puzzled at life and death’s mysteries, meaning and moment, and what words, poems, and books (“The love of books / is for children / who glimpse in them / a life to come, but / I have come / to that life and / feel uneasy / with the love of books / This is my life, / time islanded / in poems of dwindled time. / There is no other world.”) can or can’t do for us in this life. The poems are meditations it seems to me on limits, but hopeful still about the space within the limits. One poem (“Heroic Simile”) concludes “A man and a woman walk from the movies / to the house in the silence of their separate fidelities.” Another (“The Beginning of September”): “So summer gives over— / white to the color of straw / dove gray to slate blue / burnishings, / a little rain / a little light on the water.” Even the darkest poems have such burnishings, sparking wonder and even awe at the potential for beauty in our world and in our understanding of our mortality. Now when I think of Praise it won’t just be for that wonderful set piece but for the fullness of this provocative, moving work.
November 22, 2015
To borrow from Faulkner: Praise grates on universal bones, leaving scars. Hass writes of food, of sex, of language, words, and naming, or blackberries, living in the Bay Area, of growing up and growing old, of trees and of Russian literature, of the ancients and of the arts, all as if it were all immediately relevant to the everyday goings-on of the day. Indeed he makes it so. His syntax crosses trough various degrees of communicativity, and his form remains consistently inconsistent; purposeful and elusive. There is wisdom and beauty here that transcends cliché or maxim, even in its most axiomatic moments.
By magnifying the everyday moments into expanded expressions, Hass gets back to the roots of "magnify:" to praise. And it is this praise of the familiar that brings us joy.
By magnifying the everyday moments into expanded expressions, Hass gets back to the roots of "magnify:" to praise. And it is this praise of the familiar that brings us joy.
September 12, 2007
Once upon a time, I was a naive college freshman who felt that contemporary poetry just wasn't for me: I felt that I didn't "get" modern poetry and that I just couldn't relate to it. Then, one day, I read Robert Hass's poem "Meditation at Lagunitas," and I was like, "Oh!"
After that, there was no turning back.
My favorite poems in this sublime collection, besides "Meditation at Lagunitas," are "Heroic Simile" and "Against Botticelli." All three are poems in which Hass masterfully combines intellectual rigor, lucid expression, wistful romanticism, muted sensuality, and an almost Euclidean reverence for form, structure, symmetry, and recursion.
After that, there was no turning back.
My favorite poems in this sublime collection, besides "Meditation at Lagunitas," are "Heroic Simile" and "Against Botticelli." All three are poems in which Hass masterfully combines intellectual rigor, lucid expression, wistful romanticism, muted sensuality, and an almost Euclidean reverence for form, structure, symmetry, and recursion.
November 14, 2007
I read this book many years ago and it taught me the importance of questioning in poetry. As a young and naive undergrad, I thought that poems were supposed to answer all of the world's problems. This book showed me the beauty of oblivion. "Sunrise" is still one of my favorite poems. . ."Ah, love. This is fear. This is fear and syllables and the beginning of beauty." This book was assigned by poet/teacher Don Morrill, who's work is also beautiful in their oblivion.
January 1, 2016
I'm a bit of a poetry neophyte, but there were some poems that stuck with me. "Old Dominion" was a particular favorite, an outsider wearing borrowed clothes ruminating about the influences on their life.
Unfortunately, this time I was forced to read this work in several different sittings, but I think it might be better to read the entire collection in as few sessions as possible to take the book as a whole.
Unfortunately, this time I was forced to read this work in several different sittings, but I think it might be better to read the entire collection in as few sessions as possible to take the book as a whole.
August 20, 2010
Amazing. Certainly there is an exactitude to the diction, the line, form. There is careful observation and emotion and philosophy and risk. There is an excess of humanity, a largeness of heart. It is perfect.
"Sometimes it is good and sometimes / it is dangerous like the ignorance / of particulars, but our words are clear / and our movements give off light."
Also I'd like to add that this book is incredibly well-suited to be read in mid-July in a warm climate.
"Sometimes it is good and sometimes / it is dangerous like the ignorance / of particulars, but our words are clear / and our movements give off light."
Also I'd like to add that this book is incredibly well-suited to be read in mid-July in a warm climate.
February 27, 2011
The grunge fiction Gen X writers got so hung up about did get a little stale after a while. However, if there was ever a seminal piece of Australian grunge fiction, this would be my pick. This book should hit a few nerves for anyone who has lived through a time of crummy share housing, excess cask wine and flaky relationships. For me, it's the dark counterpart to 'He Died With a Falafel in His Hand' and just as good.
September 3, 2014
This collection does start off with my favorite modern poem, Against Botticelli. 20 years later, I can still recite the poem, and its cadence, emotion and word choice seem to me to be perfect. I do understand that many people find a particular stanza gratuitous and obscene, but I think it fits with the emotions Hass is conveying. I can't give it 5 stars because there is such a range of quality of the poems, in my opinion.
June 11, 2014
Technically just read through it, but I'm going to be rereading certain parts throughout the summer. I started it because "Heroic Simile" is an amazing poem, and I'm definitely working my way through others that I really loved. "Songs to Survive the Summer" is quiet an adventure, and pretty appropriate at the moment.
March 7, 2008
My favorite Hass book. Despite the long poem at the end, I feel like this book is well thought out and makes a complete whole. I don't dislike the long poem at the end, it just doesn't feel integral to the book, like it had nowhere else to go. I guess you can do that when you are Robert Hass.
August 6, 2008
I have said to groups of poets, "And who doesn't love Robert Hass?" and been quickly shot down, because apparently not everyone does love Hass, but to me, he is brilliant. He breaks all the rules and his poems are have intense depth--plus they are incredibly human.
July 25, 2012
Though I am secretly disappointed that the collection isn't Moby Dick II: The Quest Continues, to go along with the book's brilliant epigraph of compelled captain and terrifying beast, these poems' wide range yet ultimate coherence alongside each other is another kind of mastery.
August 31, 2012
loved this book for the epigraph:
“We asked the captain what course / of action he proposed to take toward / a beast so large, terrifying, and / unpredictable. He hesitated to / answer, and then said judiciously: / 'I think I shall praise it.'”
“We asked the captain what course / of action he proposed to take toward / a beast so large, terrifying, and / unpredictable. He hesitated to / answer, and then said judiciously: / 'I think I shall praise it.'”
February 27, 2014
I love poetry and I love Robert Hass. The first poem in this book knocked me out. It's so short and yet it has stuck with me all these years. I'd quote a line, but every word is essential. I like to start out my day by reading a bit of poetry. Maybe a poem or two. And Hass never disappoints.
March 5, 2014
I enjoyed this collection but not NEARLY as much as Time and Materials. Despite the reputation of Praise as a seminal poetic text of its period, I would begin an exploration of Hass's poetry with Time and Materials.
January 29, 2015
An excellent book of poetry, but didn't quite live up to "Field Guide" in my opinion. Reading the two collections back-to-back made this especially noticeable. Still, great stuff from beginning to end. A 4.5, but just short of 5 stars, even if I can't pinpoint why.
May 2, 2015
Thought-provoking, lighted and shadowed poems that explore the conflicts between nature, civilization, and self. The title expresses a kind of paradox, I think. I enjoyed these poems. I marked many to read again and again.
March 28, 2007
Jaw-droppingly good. He's one of those poets that induces fleeting sensations of taking you out of your moment and into a plane of existence where the truth is crystal clear.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews