Great Silent Ballad
Poems
- Publisher
- House of Anansi Press Inc
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2024
- Category
- Canadian, General, General
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781487012960
- Publish Date
- Sep 2024
- List Price
- $22.99
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781487012977
- Publish Date
- Sep 2024
- List Price
- $18.99
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Description
“You don’t live if there’s no poetry: you don’t live
at all, or if you appear to yourself to be living, you’re not.
You really are living, though, even if you’re dead,
because you do have poetry, poetry’s with you
whether or not you know it…”
Great Silent Ballad, beloved lyric poet A.F. Moritz’s twenty-second volume of poetry, in visionary terms forwards the assertion that poetry, a primordial reality, is in the current moment both the equal of, and the antidote to, the rest of present-day civilization and its suicidal nature.
The book unfolds in seven short sections that probe such topics as the crucial value of childhood; a human person’s development through maturity and age; the perennially avant-garde nature of great poetry no matter what time and place; and poetry’s inherent involvement with hope and creativity, life and feeling, freedom and love. Great Silent Ballad also reprises Moritz’s longstanding celebration of common human conversation, the apex of which (he argues convincingly) is what we call “poetry”—meaning not just the art of verse, but our total access to the goodness of natural existence.
About the author
George Fetherling has been writing and publishing for more than forty-five years. One of his most popular works is Travels by Night: A Memoir, which recreates leading personalities and events in the fabled Canadian cultural renaissance of 1965–75. His most recent books are The Sylvia Hotel Poems and the novel Walt Whitman’s Secret, both published in 2010. Fetherling is also a visual artist.
A.F. Moritz has published more than twenty collections of poetry as well as important works of literary history and numerous translations of Latin American verse. A leading figure in the literary life of Canada, he has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a major award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Two of his most recent works have reaffirmed his reputation: Night Street Repairs (2004) received the ReLit Award and The Sentinel (2008) won both the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine and the Griffin Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of Toronto.
Other titles by
The Garden
A Poem and an Essay
As Far As You Know
As Far As You Know special hardcover edition
Special Edition
The Sparrow
Selected Poems of A.F. Moritz
Sequence special hardcover edition
Special Edition
Sequence
For a Savage Love / Por un amor salvage
Rules of the Game, The
The New Measures
Plans Deranged by Time
The Poetry of George Fetherling