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This Time: New and Selected Poems
An exhilarating new collection by the poet often acclaimed as the modern Walt Whitman, his "spiritual reincarnation." "This healthy collection of new poems and selections from seven previous volumes is remarkable for its generosity of spirit, manifested in a warm surrealism that is often turned with humor toward his own past as a way of understanding the recurrent questions of growing old: 'Why did it take so long / for me to get lenient? What does it mean one life / only?' " ― Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Gerald Stern's achievement is immense. In this beautiful gathering . . . one encounters a poet who praises and mourns in turn and even at once." ― Grace Schulman, The Nation "Stern is one of those rare poetic souls who makes it almost impossible to remember what our world was like before his poetry came to exalt it." ― C. K. Williams
- GenresPoetry
290 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1999
11 people are currently reading
365 people want to read
About the author
Gerald Stern
67 books33 followersGerald Stern, the author of seventeen poetry collections, has won the National Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, and the Wallace Stevens Award, among others. He lives in Lambertville, New Jersey.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
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October 19, 2024More long poems than I like, and very conversational. Stern seems to poesie with ease. It makes me nervous, but sometimes it works, and other times the page glazes over. Qu'expectez-vous for 280 pages of "collected" poetry?
Here's a sample, one that I liked more than your ordinary bear:
This Was a Wonderful Night
This was a wonderful night. I heard the Brahms
piano quintet, I read a poem by Schiller,
I read a story, I listened to Gloomy Sunday.
No one called me, I studied the birthday poem
of Alvaro de Campos. I thought, if there was time,
I’d think of my garden – all that lettuce, wasted,
all those huge tomatoes lying on the ground
rotting, and I’d think of the sticks I put there,
waving good-bye, those bearded sticks. De Campos,
he was the one who suffered the most, his birthday
was like a knife to him; he sat in a chair
remembering his aunts; he thought of the flowers
and cakes, he thought of the sideboard crowded with gifts.
I look at the photo of Billie Holiday;
I turn the lightbulb on and off. I envy
those poets who loved their childhood, those who remember
the extra places laid out, the china and glasses.
They want to devour the past, they revel in pity,
they live like burnt-out matches, memory ruins them;
again and again they go back to the first place.
De Campos and I are sitting on a bench
in some American city. He hardly knows
how much I love his country. I have two things
to tell him about my childhood, one is the ice
on top of the milk, one is the sign in the window –
three things – the smell of coal. There is some snow
left on the street, the wind is blowing. He trembles
and touches the buttons on his vest. His house
is gone, his aunts are dead, the tears run down
our cheeks and chins, we are like babies, crying.
“Leave thinking to the head,” he says. I sob,
“I don’t have birthdays anymore,” I say,
“I just go on,” although I hardly feel
the sadness, there is such joy in being there
on that small bench, watching the sycamores,
looking for birds in the snow, listening for boots,
staring at the begonias, getting up
and down to rub the leaves and touch the buds –
endless pleasure, talking about New York,
comparing pain, writing the names down
of all the cities south of Lisbon, singing
one or two songs – a hundred years for him,
a little less for me, going east and west
in the new country, my heart forever pounding.
Nota bene: Alvaro de Campos was one of the poet personas of Fernando Pessoa, one of Portugal's best-known poets.
Here's a sample, one that I liked more than your ordinary bear:
This Was a Wonderful Night
This was a wonderful night. I heard the Brahms
piano quintet, I read a poem by Schiller,
I read a story, I listened to Gloomy Sunday.
No one called me, I studied the birthday poem
of Alvaro de Campos. I thought, if there was time,
I’d think of my garden – all that lettuce, wasted,
all those huge tomatoes lying on the ground
rotting, and I’d think of the sticks I put there,
waving good-bye, those bearded sticks. De Campos,
he was the one who suffered the most, his birthday
was like a knife to him; he sat in a chair
remembering his aunts; he thought of the flowers
and cakes, he thought of the sideboard crowded with gifts.
I look at the photo of Billie Holiday;
I turn the lightbulb on and off. I envy
those poets who loved their childhood, those who remember
the extra places laid out, the china and glasses.
They want to devour the past, they revel in pity,
they live like burnt-out matches, memory ruins them;
again and again they go back to the first place.
De Campos and I are sitting on a bench
in some American city. He hardly knows
how much I love his country. I have two things
to tell him about my childhood, one is the ice
on top of the milk, one is the sign in the window –
three things – the smell of coal. There is some snow
left on the street, the wind is blowing. He trembles
and touches the buttons on his vest. His house
is gone, his aunts are dead, the tears run down
our cheeks and chins, we are like babies, crying.
“Leave thinking to the head,” he says. I sob,
“I don’t have birthdays anymore,” I say,
“I just go on,” although I hardly feel
the sadness, there is such joy in being there
on that small bench, watching the sycamores,
looking for birds in the snow, listening for boots,
staring at the begonias, getting up
and down to rub the leaves and touch the buds –
endless pleasure, talking about New York,
comparing pain, writing the names down
of all the cities south of Lisbon, singing
one or two songs – a hundred years for him,
a little less for me, going east and west
in the new country, my heart forever pounding.
Nota bene: Alvaro de Campos was one of the poet personas of Fernando Pessoa, one of Portugal's best-known poets.
April 17, 2014
Gerald Stern, along with Robert Bly and Charles Simic has been one of the most influential and inspirational poets I've had the pleasure of reading. This collection won the Pulitzer for good reason as it selects many of my favorite poems from Stern's early through contemporary work. I recently purchased the much larger Gerald Stern: Early Collected Poems 1965-1992, which for completist purposes is nice, but there is obviously much overlap with This Time, and I feel that the latter presents Stern at his VERY best. In short, I recommend starting one's reading of Stern here, with This Time, and I recommend starting one's reading of Stern right away.
December 26, 2009
I can't rightly review this book since I got it out of the library only to read the poems selected from LUCKY LIFE, the book that Li-Young Lee carried around, tattered, in his pocket for a year--a book Lee said showed him that poems can be more than anecdotal, can be Psalm and Lamentation.
So I would read it here and there; I loved some, skimmed others. The body is very present throughout.
"At Bickford's" struck me:
“You should understand that I use my body now for everything whereas formerly I kept it away from higher regions.”
(I forget the linebreaks.)
And a few lines later:
“Now when light drips on me I walk around without tears.”
So I would read it here and there; I loved some, skimmed others. The body is very present throughout.
"At Bickford's" struck me:
“You should understand that I use my body now for everything whereas formerly I kept it away from higher regions.”
(I forget the linebreaks.)
And a few lines later:
“Now when light drips on me I walk around without tears.”
May 30, 2013
Beautiful, filthy Pittsburgh
June 17, 2008
The poems in this volume represent more than a quarter of a century's work. They travel through history and geography, sometimes offering a micro view and at others a macro view of the cosmos. I found a little more to like in the older works, but they've obviously stood the test of time. Stern is a master wordsmith:
"I had a kind of larkspur love..."
"a twig breaks off like one of her thoughts..."
"God of chance, how much I loved you in those days..."
"I sit in the sun forgiving myself..."
A great collection.
"I had a kind of larkspur love..."
"a twig breaks off like one of her thoughts..."
"God of chance, how much I loved you in those days..."
"I sit in the sun forgiving myself..."
A great collection.
December 22, 2009
Love Gerald Stern. If you like poems that come out like fire, or water from a hose, and are smart and poignant, Stern is your guy. Most of his collections are good, but this one has some of everything. "Your Animal", "The Dancing", "Shad" + many more --so many good poems in this collection.
November 25, 2016
These are mostly narrative poems - this happened, and then this happened and it was like this - kind of poems. And I like that, except in this case I can't quite connect to the narrative. Perhaps they are just too different from my own narrative, my own experience. There are such a lot of suburban type wildlife in these poems - tons of birds, squirrels, opposums, moles.
"For Night to Come" was quite different from most of the others. This one I almost connected to. "The Founder" was creepy. It reminded me of one of the poem in Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters where he talks about a sculpted head of Sylvia Plath. But mostly these poems feel too private, each symbol, each image so unique to Gerald Stern that I can't crack the code.
Also this is a selected poems volume - meaning that selected poems from all of Gerald Stern's books from 1973 to 1997 were included. I find these collections overwhelming. In almost 25 years, styles vary tremendously and themes change. This is a good thing but once again it makes it difficult to tackle all of this in a single volume.
The last section, the newest poems, do have a different tone and content. They are more explicit memoirs of people, of incidents. There is less nature, more sex, rawer feelings.
"For Night to Come" was quite different from most of the others. This one I almost connected to. "The Founder" was creepy. It reminded me of one of the poem in Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters where he talks about a sculpted head of Sylvia Plath. But mostly these poems feel too private, each symbol, each image so unique to Gerald Stern that I can't crack the code.
Also this is a selected poems volume - meaning that selected poems from all of Gerald Stern's books from 1973 to 1997 were included. I find these collections overwhelming. In almost 25 years, styles vary tremendously and themes change. This is a good thing but once again it makes it difficult to tackle all of this in a single volume.
The last section, the newest poems, do have a different tone and content. They are more explicit memoirs of people, of incidents. There is less nature, more sex, rawer feelings.
November 1, 2015
The Dancing
In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a postwar Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did
in 1945 in the tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
my mother red with laughter, my father cupping
his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance
of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum,
half fart, the world at last a meadow,
the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us
screaming and falling, as if we were dying,
as if we could never stop-- in 1945--
in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home
of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away
from the other dancing-- in Poland and Germany--
oh God of mercy, of wild God.
In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a postwar Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did
in 1945 in the tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
my mother red with laughter, my father cupping
his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance
of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum,
half fart, the world at last a meadow,
the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us
screaming and falling, as if we were dying,
as if we could never stop-- in 1945--
in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home
of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away
from the other dancing-- in Poland and Germany--
oh God of mercy, of wild God.
October 14, 2008
I'm in a bad mood so I'm giving this book 2 stars. In a good mood it could have been 3. And if i'd read this 10 years ago i probably would have given it 4 stars. or maybe 5 even.
Stern is (or was) compared to Whitman and I can see why. I can see Rumi also. But, honestly, Whitman and Rumi, despite their promises, deliver. Stern delivers nothing. His loafing is just loafing. And his poems ride on a sheen of smugness and dreaminess.
The worst poems, also, feel like really bad Jack Gilbert.
When i was 19 years old and stoned in New Orleans on New Year's Eve one of my friend's said i was spouting Cosmic Bullshit. This occurs to me often now as I read Stern,....
Stern is (or was) compared to Whitman and I can see why. I can see Rumi also. But, honestly, Whitman and Rumi, despite their promises, deliver. Stern delivers nothing. His loafing is just loafing. And his poems ride on a sheen of smugness and dreaminess.
The worst poems, also, feel like really bad Jack Gilbert.
When i was 19 years old and stoned in New Orleans on New Year's Eve one of my friend's said i was spouting Cosmic Bullshit. This occurs to me often now as I read Stern,....
February 24, 2013
Like bread and butter. The exultation of the simplest yet hardest things, said in living rooms and kitchens, like being held and lullabied by weathered hands that have worked their whole life in the carving of words, not for show, but for the usefulness of being human.
December 12, 2022
I have never been interested in reading poetry but when I read that he died recently (October 2022) and that he was from Pittsburgh, a steel town, and Jewish, I thought it would be a good idea to check out some of his work. I found this book on the shelf at my local library, and I read and enjoyed the entire book, much to my surprise. Most of his poems are very approachable. One of my favorites is "Memoir."
... I had a girlfriend who played the harp and she was thin
and wise and I was stupid with her; and forty
years later I was hosting a brunch in an elegant
downtown hotel with my wife and my teenage children
and aging mother and aging aunt and aging
friend of my mother's tortured with arthritis and there
was that girlfriend playing the harp again on a small
stage beside the tables and we stared
and exchanged numbers but I was still married and she
was changing her life again after spending thirty
years with an angry urologist; her eyes
where wet and joyous, large and trusting,
out of a drugstore novel, I was stricken,
RIP Mr. Stern
... I had a girlfriend who played the harp and she was thin
and wise and I was stupid with her; and forty
years later I was hosting a brunch in an elegant
downtown hotel with my wife and my teenage children
and aging mother and aging aunt and aging
friend of my mother's tortured with arthritis and there
was that girlfriend playing the harp again on a small
stage beside the tables and we stared
and exchanged numbers but I was still married and she
was changing her life again after spending thirty
years with an angry urologist; her eyes
where wet and joyous, large and trusting,
out of a drugstore novel, I was stricken,
RIP Mr. Stern
April 15, 2020
"Lucky Life" is one of my favorite poems and I picked this up in a used bookstore because I wanted to read more of Gerald Stern's work. Plus, living in Pittsburgh, I felt that becoming familiar with him was somewhat of a civic literary duty.
This collection fell kind of flat for me. As other reviewers noted, these are long and narrative-style poems about various places (the "beautiful, filthy Pittsburgh" of the coal mining and steel mill days, New Jersey, Paris, among others). There is also much observation of squirrels and other animal life.
Kind of difficult for me to really get into this one, unfortunately. Still, I do have an appreciation and respect for Gerald Stern nonetheless.
This collection fell kind of flat for me. As other reviewers noted, these are long and narrative-style poems about various places (the "beautiful, filthy Pittsburgh" of the coal mining and steel mill days, New Jersey, Paris, among others). There is also much observation of squirrels and other animal life.
Kind of difficult for me to really get into this one, unfortunately. Still, I do have an appreciation and respect for Gerald Stern nonetheless.
January 15, 2023
Stern's poetry grapples with the darkness and the light in everyday life. He will find beauty and awe amidst the detritus of a city street and he will find something dark in the elegance of a flower. This collection gathers from his entire oeuvre and is a wonderful introduction to this vital, daring, and unique poet. Highly recommended.
October 4, 2023
I thought the earliest poems were the most moving, but the older he got, the more heavily he relied on metaphor and imagery, to the extent that some pieces are nearly incomprehensible. I know a lot of the later work had a satirical/humorous quality, but I preferred the pieces that were more relatable to the reader.
August 29, 2022
There were a few good poems but I overall found the book very boring. I only got halfway through. I really don't understand how this won the national book award.
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October 29, 2024First read: October 28, 2024, Monday
December 20, 2015
I picked up this book at the Dodge Poetry Festival back in 2000 or so after hearing the author read some of his work aloud (I think; my memory is pretty faulty).
Gerald Stern is very into nature, but he tends to use long sentences & the imagery is hard for a person who isn't familiar w/every bird & tree to follow. Additionally, his poems' titles are direct quotes - often from the first or last line - of the poems; it seems rather unoriginal & as if the poems could just as easily go untitled.
There were certainly some good lines & imagery, but, overall, it was just OK.
Gerald Stern is very into nature, but he tends to use long sentences & the imagery is hard for a person who isn't familiar w/every bird & tree to follow. Additionally, his poems' titles are direct quotes - often from the first or last line - of the poems; it seems rather unoriginal & as if the poems could just as easily go untitled.
There were certainly some good lines & imagery, but, overall, it was just OK.
March 13, 2008
In this career-spanning collection of poems, documenting almost 30 years of writing, Mr. Stern invents and sustains a surprisingly consistent voice so that the book as a whole melds together in a cohesive manner. Among the many admirable qualities in his writing, I noted three areas where Stern’s ability is most impressive: his technique for sustaining long poems, the pattern in which he concludes his pieces and the innovative way he includes the voices of women in his work.
June 15, 2008
After hearing Gerald Stern read, I bought this book. The book collects previously written and new poetry. It traveled with me for a couple months and we grew old together--older than a couple months anyway. Stern's voice became my friend... and I learned a lot about him and about myself when I took the time to think about these individual poems. Together these poems make a personality on the page. I'll never forget him.
October 21, 2007
If you ever hear Gerald Stern read, you might be surprised or even put off my his heavy Bronx accent, his slight nasality, Woody Allen-ishness. But even heard his poems have a prosaic clarity and directness that always partially obscures some jewel of deep, deep tenderness and insight. His best work moves me more than almost anyone.
January 11, 2009
This is the book to pick up if you want to read Gerald Stern. It has all of his hits and some of his lesser known gems. I'd particularly recommend "Behaving Like a Jew," "This is It," and "My Swallows." Stern's poems are not abstract academic exercises, they have a simultaneous beauty and grittiness. The have a purpose, an import.
March 2, 2014
I enjoyed a number of the lightly surrealistic poems by this little fellow, but 300 pages is a bit much on the squirrels and birds---pretty one-dimensional for thirty years of writing poetry. Nevertheless there is a joie de vivre here, and certainly some meat and quirkiness behind the light style of his writing.
March 19, 2012
Didn't make it all the way through. First se(le)ction didn't grab me but some of the poems from Lucky Life were superb. A shorter, tighter selected by Stern might be more up my alley.
read_me_piles
January 9, 2008NBA winner presented to me upon receipt of one JD from UVA by Michael K.
November 29, 2009
when it works it is wonderful, but often it doesn't-repetitive style
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March 22, 2013811.54 S8392t 1998
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews