Wagoner, David

Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke: 1943-1963

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Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke: 1943-1963

Manufacturer: Copper Canyon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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On Poetry and Craft
Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)
Collected Poems
The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
The Glass House: The Life of Theodore Roethke

ASIN: 1556592485

Book Description

"There are only two passions in art; there are love and hate-with endless modifications."-Theodore Roethke

At his death, Theodore Roethke left behind 277 spiral notebooks full of poetry fragments, aphorisms, jokes, memos, journal entries, random phrases, bits of dialogue, commentary, and fugitive miscellany. Within these notebooks, Roethke allowed his mind to rove freely, moment by moment, moving from the practical to the transcendental, from the halting to the sublime.

Fellow poet and colleague David Wagoner distilled these notebooks-twelve linear feet of bookshelf-into an energetic, wise, and rollicking collection that shows Roethke to be one of the truly phenomenal creative sources in American poetry.

From "A Psychic Janitor":

I'm sick of fumbling, furtive, disorganized minds like bad lawyers trying to make too many points that this is an age of criticism: and these, mind you, tin-eared punks who couldn't tell a poem from an old boot if a gun were put to their heads . . .
Cover art by United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.

Tracker
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Hilarious and moving story of a teen orphan in 1889 Colorado

Tracker
David Wagoner
Manufacturer: Little, Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: 0316917001

Customer Reviews:

Hilarious and moving story of a teen orphan in 1889 Colorado.......1999-07-15

David Wagoner pulls you in with a giant yank from his very first lines:

When the bank blew up, I had just got to the part in "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" where it was an Oink Oink here and an Oink Oink there (it's easier to grunt on a mouth harp than do most anything else, so I was stretching it out a little to make up for spoiling it later on when the Gobble Gobbles commenced), and at first I thought I'd busted my eardrums from blowing too hard.

In one short paragraph the reader knows he or she is in for wild times, and Wagoner delivers. Tracker is the moving, astonishing, touching and hilarious story of 15-year-old orphan Eli in 1889 Colorado. Raised by an abusive livery stable owner, Eli has lived over a barn all his life, pitching hay by day but dreaming by night of following his hero, the half-Indian old gray-headed man, Tracker Byrd.

When bandits dynamite and then rob the First National Bank of Sheepshank, Colorado, Eli seizes his chance. If he can hire on as part of the posse chasing the villains, he will at the same time learn tracking from Tracker Byrd.

Eli and Tracker split off from the rest of the posse, finding excitement and trouble all along the trail. One walking package of excitement and trouble is Miz Cherry Bastion, a girl so beautiful but headstrong that Eli calls her "both sides of a sermon, the harp music and the sinner's roast."

David Wagoner departs from the stale Western formula of the straight-and-narrow, do-gooder hero and his lily-white, sweet-as-honey love interest. Eli is honest but human, and grapples with his conscience often-with sometimes shaky but hilarious results. Miz Cherry Bastion is about as sweet as vinegar and twice as hard to swallow. Eli's so-called hero, Tracker Byrd, is a hard-drinking, wisecracking old varmint who alternatively delights and dismays Eli.

By painting the characters believable and human, Wagoner does young adult readers a favor. He uses real-life personalities and problems in a make-believe world to allow his readers to learn some concrete answers for today's topsy-turvy world. Sometimes a model or mock-up of a troublesome situation helps overcome perception difficulties.

Tracker is a good role model for today. David Wagoner uses no objectionable language or situations in his novel-he doesn't have to. His clear writing and down-to-earth backwoods style language and wisdom (mixed with generous portions of humor) tell a good story of how far perseverance, trust, and a good healthy does of optimism can take you. Listen to Tracker teaching Eli as Eli teaches the reader:

"Let me put it to you serious," [Tracker] says. "All right, you're chasing some bank robbers. What had you figured on doing when you caught up with them?" "Why, I don't know," I says, shamed to admit I'd been thinking more about improving myself and looking for sign than anything else. It was a beautiful day, and the sun made every crack, stick, grass-blade, weed-stalk, and rock-edge, near and far, look like it was fit to bust, just for the sheer pleasure of being itself and not shaped like nothing else nor colored the same nor standing or laying the same way. What difference did it make if we caught somebody or not? "Take them into custody, I reckon." "Where's that at?" Tracker says. "Where's that 'custody' at?" I tried to be patient with him. "I mean back to Sheepshank so's they can get a fair trial for bank-busting."

P.S. Anyone who has such fun with the English language is bound to be a good poet. Here's a chance to lure the unwary into poetry. David Wagoner is known more for his poetry today than his novels. If the young adult reader loves the novels, perhaps he or she will give the poetry a whack (although Wagoner's wonderfully irreverent way with words is absent in his poetry-too bad!) After all, David Wagoner himself thinks he's a better poet than novelist. Are you sure, David?

Good Morning and Good Night (Illinois Poetry Series)
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Strongly recommended compendium of verse for personal reading as well as academic library literary collections

Good Morning and Good Night (Illinois Poetry Series)
David Wagoner
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Traveling Light: COLLECTED AND NEW POEMS (Illinois Poetry Series)

ASIN: 0252072391

Customer Reviews:

Strongly recommended compendium of verse for personal reading as well as academic library literary collections.......2005-07-06

The impressively accomplished author of seventeen books of poems and ten novels, David Wagoner is also the recipient of six prizes from "Poetry" and winner of the 1981 Ruth Lilly Prize for poetry. Good Morning And Good Night is the latest anthology showcasing a master poetry at the height of his craft and is a strongly recommended compendium of verse for personal reading as well as academic library literary collections. The Getaway: They had to act natural. They had to look like/They were still parts of an ordinary day/Together on the sidewalk across the street/To the unfamiliar car, yet they had to be/Quick about it without running. They had to think/Taking those steps, remembering, knowing/Every foot they could put between their bodies/And the scene behind them, where the noise/Of buzzers and bells and yowling/And terribly shocked voices was growing/Louder and louder. They pulled away/As calmly as possible, staring straight ahead/Straight-faced, not glancing once/To either side or backward, let alone/At each other, and took a turn in the most unlikely/Direction they could think of. Under the limit,/They drove steadily, legally toward home.

Through the Forest: New and Selected Poems, 1977-1987

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Through the Forest: New and Selected Poems, 1977-1987
David Wagoner
Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Collected Poems: 1956-1976
David Wagoner
Manufacturer: Indiana Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0253112451

Who shall be the sun?: Poems based on the lore, legends, and myths of northwest coast and plateau Indians

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Read this one aloud at my funeral

Who shall be the sun?: Poems based on the lore, legends, and myths of northwest coast and plateau Indians
David Wagoner
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0253365279

Customer Reviews:

Read this one aloud at my funeral.......2002-12-18

I've loved this book for more than 20 years. Wagoner makes the myths and sensibilities of the native people of the Pacific Northwest come alive in simple powerful language.

The poems stick in my head. I remember his ``Songs for the Bones of Salmon'' every time I put a bite of salmon into my mouth. ``Lost'' resonates for me whenever I step out into the forest and see the nurse logs of fallen cedar trees, and the salal and ferny undergrowth.

And his ``Burial Poem'' has become the mandatory reading at all our family funerals. It is elegant, spare, and presents an attitude toward death that I find consistent with my family's ecological and theological values.

Book Description

As a recipient of Poetry's Levinson Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize and a nominee for the American Book Award and National Book Award, David Wagoner is one of this country's most celebrated poets.

In The House of Song, he offers a hundred new poems in six parts. At turns elegiac, comic, and nostalgic, these poems venture to the seemingly infinitesimal points where people, legends, and culture collide with nature, memory, and action.

With characteristic wit and brevity, Wagoner chronicles the material invasions of the natural world, reconsidering Thoreau amid ruminations on voyeurs and destroyers, slug watchers and moth collectors.

The House of Song asserts Wagoner's place among the finest of American poets, past and present.

Customer Reviews:

Master lyricist.......2003-09-08

I liked the lyrical nature of the poems he wrote, but some were a little lacking. For me, a good poem has to have substance, but I missed some of that in this poetry selection. Perhaps I'm not looking deeply enough, but the best poems by David have always been his nature poems, and I felt this didn't have enough of those to form a complete collection.

Sometimes his poems have compelling rhetoric that make you think deeply, and his style is at its peak. Other times I feel there is no connection between his words and their actual meaning, just experiences he happened to write down.

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