Dimensions
145 x 216 x 13mm
In Save the Last Dance, Gerald Stern gives us a stunning collection of his intimately personal—yet always universal, and always surprising—poems, rich with humor and insight. Shorter lyric poems in the first two parts continue the satirical and often redemptive vision of his last collection, Everything Is Burning, while never failing to carve out new emotional territory. In the third part, a long poem called “The Preacher,” Stern takes the book of Ecclesiastes as a starting point for a meditation on loss, futility, and emptiness, represented here by the concept of a “hole” that resurfaces throughout.
from “The Preacher”
you must tire I
said to Peter always hearing the same
trees sung the same words singing, the same
heart breaking I said and con permissione
I will change trees though I am almost eighty
now, but what the hell, there probably are
others along the river....
