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83rd out of 100 books
—
31 voters
Time and Materials
by
Robert Hass
The poems in Robert Hass's new collection--his first to appear in a decade--are grounded in the beauty and energy of the physical world, and in the bafflement of the present moment in American culture. This work is breathtakingly immediate, stylistically varied, redemptive, and wise.
His familiar landscapes are here--San Francisco, the Northern California coast, the Sierra...more
His familiar landscapes are here--San Francisco, the Northern California coast, the Sierra...more
Hardcover, 96 pages
Published
October 9th 2007
by Ecco
(first published October 1st 2007)
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Time and Materials: Poems is a book of poetry about the physical world. The book received the Pulitzer Prize (2007) and the National Book Award (2008). There is no recommended age group for this, none of the poetry is particularly inappropriate. This book I read in an ebook format, on my kindle. Although it was easier because I didn’t have a book to carry, and some of my books are in one place, I don’t see to much of a difference on the kindle, as opposed to reading the physical book. The poetry...more
On second reading, this collection opened up to me as a meditation on the uncertainty or “problems” of words, of description, of this thing called poetry in the face of history and atrocity.
After his powerful “problem” poems (“The Problem of Describing Color” and “The Problem of Describing Trees”), the next poem, “Winged and Acid Dark,” inspired by the film A Woman in Berlin, interrupts the terrible story about a female prostitute in WWII for us to know as he does, of Basho’s admonition on poet...more
After his powerful “problem” poems (“The Problem of Describing Color” and “The Problem of Describing Trees”), the next poem, “Winged and Acid Dark,” inspired by the film A Woman in Berlin, interrupts the terrible story about a female prostitute in WWII for us to know as he does, of Basho’s admonition on poet...more
Multi-award winner, critic, Professor of English at Berkeley, translator of Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz and himself US Poet Laureate between 1995-97, Robert Hass is one of the most lauded of contemporary American poets. And yet he seems to be little known in the UK. As far as I understand, unlike, say, John Ashbery, Louise Gluck, Jorie Graham, August Kleinzahler and Mary Oliver among others, Hass has never had a UK publisher (unless you count his contribution to Five American Poets from Carcan...more
On a scale from "cool" to "academic," Robert Hass would vastly favor the latter but fortunately that's my preference in literature and especially verse where, in the end, wit is all. Considering my poetic sensibilities, it's a wonder this was my first encounter with Hass.
All that being said, I did get a little bogged down about three-quarters through with quite a few prose poems about politics in a row. There was a lot of detail there but I feel like it got lost in the repetitive form and the we...more
All that being said, I did get a little bogged down about three-quarters through with quite a few prose poems about politics in a row. There was a lot of detail there but I feel like it got lost in the repetitive form and the we...more
All the new Robert Hass poems are about the old Robert Hass poems & I've just reached the point where "I don't give a shit." Well-written meditations are BORING. At some point you should DO SOMETHING ELSE. Meditate walking into a room with a gun in your hand a distinctive limp your feet are bleeding etc
Some of these poems are very good (like, the one about red) & Hass isn't going to lose the line. Probably not the stanza. Maybe not the poem. But I guess what I am arguing is that even whe...more
Some of these poems are very good (like, the one about red) & Hass isn't going to lose the line. Probably not the stanza. Maybe not the poem. But I guess what I am arguing is that even whe...more
As an avid reader of modern verse, perhaps I have not read enough Robert Hass as it has been years since I have tackled one of his volumes.
Read this review as somewhere between a 4.5 and 4.9. I really want to give it a 5 star rating, but there are a few small things that keep me from lavishing that upon it. Overall, I love the voice. I agree with its politics and and am drawn in by its rhythms...
My one major complaint (such as it is) is that many of the poems are quite prosaic - in other words,...more
Read this review as somewhere between a 4.5 and 4.9. I really want to give it a 5 star rating, but there are a few small things that keep me from lavishing that upon it. Overall, I love the voice. I agree with its politics and and am drawn in by its rhythms...
My one major complaint (such as it is) is that many of the poems are quite prosaic - in other words,...more
I have no doubt in my mind that Robert Hass is an intelligent, sensitive, big-hearted, humane, good-intentioned, human being. His poems manifest these qualities again and again. So if it is enough that a poem is a vehicle for conveying agreeable qualities, then Time and Materials is a fine book of poems. But it isn’t enough for me. Which puts me in a conundrum: what then do I want from a poem? What’s wrong with genial, prolix, often formless verse moseying down the page in a humane, decent way i...more
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i should probably be giving this two stars but i'm adding an extra star because of 'art and life,' 'the problem of describing trees,' and 'envy of other people's poems,' at least. also because he's still better than billy collins (i should probably downgrade the collins book i read to one star. ugh).
i wanted to like this because for a time i loved the famous hass poem 'meditation at lagunitas' (although due to a variety of events it has since been ruined for me, used up) but i didn't, and also...more
i wanted to like this because for a time i loved the famous hass poem 'meditation at lagunitas' (although due to a variety of events it has since been ruined for me, used up) but i didn't, and also...more
Feb 05, 2009
Bookmarks Magazine
added it
Robert Hass, poet laureate of the United States between 1995 and 1997 and author of the popular Poet's Choice newspaper column, surprised critics with his fifth collection of verse. As eloquent and inventive as in his previous collections, here Hass for the first time tackles public and private issues
My overwhelming impression is that Hass is a consummate poet who can write pretty much anything he wants. Indeed, this volume of poems covers almost every form on pretty much any subject you care to name. And the scope of his learning is immense as demonstrated by ‘State of the Planet' (On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory).
His mood varies: he can be playful as in 'I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name Is Dmitri', whilst at the same time intimate. Fu...more
His mood varies: he can be playful as in 'I Am Your Waiter Tonight and My Name Is Dmitri', whilst at the same time intimate. Fu...more
2 likes · like · see review
The Problem Of Describing Color
______________________________________
If I said-remembering in summer,
The cardinals sudden smudge of red
In the bare gray winter woods-
If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat
Of the girl with pooched-out lips
Dangling a wiry lapdog
In the painting of Renoir-
If I said fire, if I said blood welling from a cut-
Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass scented summer air
On a wind-struck hillside outside Fano-
If I said, her one red earring tugging at her silky lobe,
If she t...more
______________________________________
If I said-remembering in summer,
The cardinals sudden smudge of red
In the bare gray winter woods-
If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat
Of the girl with pooched-out lips
Dangling a wiry lapdog
In the painting of Renoir-
If I said fire, if I said blood welling from a cut-
Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass scented summer air
On a wind-struck hillside outside Fano-
If I said, her one red earring tugging at her silky lobe,
If she t...more
Robert Hass, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 (Ecco, 2007)
Robert Hass is a former Poet Laureate of the United States, which should tell you all you need to know about the quality of his work. And Time and Materials, the first book he published after his laureateship, does not disappoint in that regard.
“In one version of the legend, the sirens couldn't sing.
It was only a sailor's story that they could.
So Odysseus, lashed to the mast, was harrowed
by a music that he didn't hear—plungings of sea,...more
Robert Hass is a former Poet Laureate of the United States, which should tell you all you need to know about the quality of his work. And Time and Materials, the first book he published after his laureateship, does not disappoint in that regard.
“In one version of the legend, the sirens couldn't sing.
It was only a sailor's story that they could.
So Odysseus, lashed to the mast, was harrowed
by a music that he didn't hear—plungings of sea,...more
Some poems in this book are quite good. "Etymology," for example. Some stuff near the middle I found not too smart. In general, his lazy punctuation/syntax can be frustrating. Maybe I would like his earlier stuff better. His poems about politics, or what's wrong with politics, are surprisingly good, especially as it's difficult to write such poems. On the other hand, the inclusion in a book containing those of poems which make no real secret of what an upper-middle class life he leads, beaches i...more
incoherent mental notes til i reread (finished in installments at borders): for the first while was thinking, more language & materials! the materials of language. lots of writing like paintings (as something with no order or individual parts), rich w/color & light, taste, slow tracking of the animal, v tactile... while also sort of awkwardly courting the makings of, i suppose, culture? some surprising & almost jarring political denunciations (a fucking killer hit on the world bank /...more
About one third of the time I absolutely love this man. The poems that are the most enjoyable to me are the ones evocative of "Meditation at Lagunitas", one of his more widely anthologized. His ability to give nods to postmodern intellectual historical contexts while retaining a relaxed idiom, chiseling all the while a formidable lyric replica of the physical world is stunning: to me it exemplifies poetry's function of illuminating personhood through observations of the problems of language and...more
I studied with Robert Hass and learned a lot from him as a teacher. But I learned more, perhaps, from the way he perceives nature and people in his poems. I enjoy falling into a Hass poem, which is what you do...it's not a straight reading experience.
The nature part is easy. Bob has a gift for observation and detail (not unlike Elizabeth Bishop's, in my view). But getting people right in poems is a lot harder.
There's usually a dialogue and plenty of interior thinking, analyzing, self-analyzing....more
The nature part is easy. Bob has a gift for observation and detail (not unlike Elizabeth Bishop's, in my view). But getting people right in poems is a lot harder.
There's usually a dialogue and plenty of interior thinking, analyzing, self-analyzing....more
4.5 stars.
This book is well deserving of the many awards it's garnered recently, and although it took Hass 8 years to write the poems gathered here, it seems worth the time it took.
Some of his previous concerns with the failure of language (as in "Meditation at Laguinitas") remain--in "The Problem of Describing Trees," for example, "the tree danced. No./ The tree capitalized./ No. There are limits to saying,/ In language, what the tree did." He also goes back to his projects in imitation/transla...more
This book is well deserving of the many awards it's garnered recently, and although it took Hass 8 years to write the poems gathered here, it seems worth the time it took.
Some of his previous concerns with the failure of language (as in "Meditation at Laguinitas") remain--in "The Problem of Describing Trees," for example, "the tree danced. No./ The tree capitalized./ No. There are limits to saying,/ In language, what the tree did." He also goes back to his projects in imitation/transla...more
I've been a casual Hass reader for awhile, but often I don't have the time to truly sit down and delve into his works as is usually required. I might enjoy the poems in this slim collection if I had put more work into it, but I have been too lazy lately.
Anyway, I specifically liked "The Problem of Describing Color" and his personal way of explaining just what shade is meant. And "Poem with a Cucumber in It" and "Old Movie with the Sound Turned Off" were worth the whole trip.
Anyway, I specifically liked "The Problem of Describing Color" and his personal way of explaining just what shade is meant. And "Poem with a Cucumber in It" and "Old Movie with the Sound Turned Off" were worth the whole trip.
Maybe this one suffered because I've read some very strong collections lately. Still, this book won an "award." I realize that Hass went "political" with some of the poems, and maybe that had something to do with his winning the award -- that and his name recognition. Whatever. "Political" poems are often bad poems, but "Bush's War" (the most obvious political poem in this collection) isn't a bad poem. Whether it has legs years from now in anything other than anti-war anthologies, is another que...more
i *really* loved this. all of it. i loved the imitations, the personal moments, the war poems, the observations, the sounds. these are, i think, the first contemporary american war poems that i have actually loved. i've read a few that i enjoyed, certainly, but these were really moving. the lines tend to not be punchy and perfect individually - the effects are cumulative and layered.
Although I don’t think that every single poem in the book is a mind-blower, so many are.
Has has a rare combination of humanism, humility, and a willingness to push formally against the bounds of poetry. He has poems that go from a nipple to Eastern philosophy to ... the poems are containers that are not sorted by any usual system. For that, I admire them.
I also admire Hass for his willingness to put his struggle to understand on the page. As always, I’m least fond of his domestic verse -- too sa...more
Has has a rare combination of humanism, humility, and a willingness to push formally against the bounds of poetry. He has poems that go from a nipple to Eastern philosophy to ... the poems are containers that are not sorted by any usual system. For that, I admire them.
I also admire Hass for his willingness to put his struggle to understand on the page. As always, I’m least fond of his domestic verse -- too sa...more
Hass' writing in this collection is smooth,laconic and deceptively simple, with a good poetic keel to most of his work, but for me, the end result of reading a few pages is the desire to take a nice long contemplative nap. Not a poet whose words come alive and creep into your head where you can't get them out, unlike the oriental haiku masters his poetry seems to attempt to reflect in longer form. All in all, not my kind of poet, but for those who like the stripped down, two-syllable word, moder...more
A nice range in this book: teeny tiny poems, very long single-stanza things, series, confessional narratives, political poems. It seems like Hass uses nature as a way out, sometimes. Like, the poem will be in the middle of an intense, sticky conflict, and he'll up and end it with, like, "Oh, we'll all die some day anyway and turn into trees." But this only happens sometimes. Most of the time the poems seem very whole.
For me, Robert Hass' poetry (and this book) invokes the flavor of wide-ranging discussions and is partly characterized by a certain discursiveness in line and form, a novelistic interest in personalities which is not typical of most poetry, close observation of nature and human antics, and evanescent feeling. There are some amazing poems here as well as some that are interesting, but perhaps not as successful. Some of my favorites where something elusive as a moment is caught in words on paper:...more
Oy. Most disappointing. Why do so many poets, like Hass, insist on stretching their talent into long-winded poems? Something to be said for concision, no? His "Sun Under Wood" is so much better, tighter. I was bored reading this (which very very rarely happens).
The cover is the prettiest part of the book.
The cover is the prettiest part of the book.
This really comes down to personal taste versus the content of the book. I'm a fan of succint and evocative poetry. I prefer the poem that either presents its tone in a handful of lines or is packed full of incendiary lines and phrases for the duration of the piece.
Hass, on the other hand, tend to take the meandering approach that seems to be in vogue as of late. It's a languid, stream-of-consciousness approach that takes its time squirming and stretching into its ideas. This sometimes leads to...more
Hass, on the other hand, tend to take the meandering approach that seems to be in vogue as of late. It's a languid, stream-of-consciousness approach that takes its time squirming and stretching into its ideas. This sometimes leads to...more
An excellent collection by a well-respected poet who has an audience. I remember reading "Bush's War" in The American Poetry Review. It's didactic, but it's poetry. I like the short pieces best.
IOWA, JANUARY
In the long winter nights, a farmer's dreams are narrow.
Over and over, he enters the furrow.
IOWA, JANUARY
In the long winter nights, a farmer's dreams are narrow.
Over and over, he enters the furrow.
Time & Materials: Poems 1997-2005 is Robert Hass's collection that shares with Philip Schultz's Failure the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. I won't try to pass my comments off as criticism. For me, the collection as a whole was not particularly intriguing or moving. But poetry is so personal - I believe we are drawn to poetry in much the same way that we find ourselves attracted to other people. What I see in a person may be completely lost on someone else. More than other forms of literatur...more
For some reason, I tended to love the poems gathered in the middle of the book the most, especially "Etymology." I read through most of the poems twice, and I don't think that was a waste of my time, or of materials. Hass always seems to hit the right nerve on the head.
I read a newspaper article this week about Robert Hass, who apparently is a superstar among contemporary poets. I'm not familiar with his work. This volume of his, published in 2007, won the National Book Award for Poetry.
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| Poetry Readers Ch...: Robert Hass, Time and Materials | 8 | 28 | Nov 26, 2012 07:33am | |
| 21st Century Lite...: May 2012 Poetry - Featured Book - Robert Hass | 13 | 27 | Aug 20, 2012 02:58pm |
Robert 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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“Sometimes from this hillside just after sunset
The rim of the sky takes on a tinge
Of the palest green, like the flesh of a cucumber
When you peel it carefully.”
—
6 people liked it
The rim of the sky takes on a tinge
Of the palest green, like the flesh of a cucumber
When you peel it carefully.”
“It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.”
—
2 people liked it
More quotes…
