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Tell Me Again How the White Heron Rises and Flies Across the Nacreous River at Twilight Towards the Distant Islands
For at least two decades Hayden Carruth has been a poet of the first quality... a writer so well endowed with character, courage, stamina, honesty, and independence as to make whatever styles he has adopted or adapted peculiarly his own.' -R.W. Flint, Parnassus
- GenresPoetry
83 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1989
About the author
Hayden Carruth
114 books48 followersHayden Carruth was an American poet, literary critic, and anthologist known for his distinctive voice, blending formal precision with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. Over a career spanning more than sixty years, he published over thirty books of poetry, as well as essays, literary criticism, and anthologies. His work often explored themes of rural life, hardship, mental illness, and social justice, reflecting both his personal struggles and his political convictions.
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Carruth studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago. His early career included serving as editor-in-chief of Poetry and as an advisory editor of The Hudson Review for two decades. He later became poetry editor at Harper’s Magazine and held teaching positions at Johnson State College, the University of Vermont, and Syracuse University, where he influenced a new generation of poets.
Carruth received numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Collected Shorter Poems (1992) and the National Book Award for Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey (1996). His later works, such as Doctor Jazz and Last Poems, further cemented his reputation as a major voice in American poetry. His influential anthology The Voice That Is Great Within Us remains a landmark collection of American verse.
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Carruth studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago. His early career included serving as editor-in-chief of Poetry and as an advisory editor of The Hudson Review for two decades. He later became poetry editor at Harper’s Magazine and held teaching positions at Johnson State College, the University of Vermont, and Syracuse University, where he influenced a new generation of poets.
Carruth received numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Collected Shorter Poems (1992) and the National Book Award for Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey (1996). His later works, such as Doctor Jazz and Last Poems, further cemented his reputation as a major voice in American poetry. His influential anthology The Voice That Is Great Within Us remains a landmark collection of American verse.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 16, 2023
I picked this book up used, having never heard of Hayden Carruth, solely for its ridiculously long and unique title, and that was the first touch of a new and exciting love affair 😏
Carruth's poetry is creative, dynamic, and beautiful, and challenged some ideas I had about what makes a poem a poem. Rather than the minimalism and scarcity you see in many poems, Carruth allows for the expansiveness of language that follows a mode near the stream-of-consciousness aesthetics of Modernist prose. He allows images and thoughts to meander, dip into their close associations, refer an obscure philosopher, and swing to an impressionistic jive for a moment before returning to its center and carrying on.
Nor do the poems shy away from the personal and the author's minutea. Countless poems name his wife, friends, models and teachers; hell! the entire back half of the book is dedicated to a series of poems that read like eulogies to a distant and deceased Mother.
All these elements combine to create an unusual collection of poetry, not meant to be recited or memorized, but to be savored and appreciated in their reading's punctuality.
Carruth's poetry is creative, dynamic, and beautiful, and challenged some ideas I had about what makes a poem a poem. Rather than the minimalism and scarcity you see in many poems, Carruth allows for the expansiveness of language that follows a mode near the stream-of-consciousness aesthetics of Modernist prose. He allows images and thoughts to meander, dip into their close associations, refer an obscure philosopher, and swing to an impressionistic jive for a moment before returning to its center and carrying on.
Nor do the poems shy away from the personal and the author's minutea. Countless poems name his wife, friends, models and teachers; hell! the entire back half of the book is dedicated to a series of poems that read like eulogies to a distant and deceased Mother.
All these elements combine to create an unusual collection of poetry, not meant to be recited or memorized, but to be savored and appreciated in their reading's punctuality.
September 24, 2018
The title has been flying around in my head ever since I read this a million years ago!
February 8, 2013
Skipped day only day of high school (not that I was a Puritan or prude), but never had a reason like this book of poems to just immerse myself in incantation and vision and pain and love and loam and "General metaphysical fall-out"!
After the day, reading and reading Hayden's book, I went to his reading at St. Michaels College ... and ever since I have ponder every inch of Hayden's work, written him letters throughout the 90's when I getting my MFA at Columbia and into the 21st century before his passing. I always marveled, when I look back at my ungrammatical raving, British-Invasion crazed letters of praise and wonder I sent to Hayden, that I always received a beautifully typed letter, then a few dot-matrix letters, but always a healthy chunk of mind and a page of two in response. This labor of reflection to reach out to a babbling-boy, poet wannabe Vermont kid, pre easy Facebook five second soundbites, as I said always amazed me and still holds a place in my writer heart of deep gratitude.
Since 1992, I have been cobbling at literary reflections and the special collections of his papers at UVM hoping some day to be a biographer of his work/life (whatever a biography of any person especially a writer could be -- but there is some Existential glue of life in the process for a earnest, writing immersed, human vision of a biography). Some day I hope to be that proud man or "reader with steely eyes" as he says in his first journal (as a fledgling writer) started March 29th, 1942 ... where he wrote, "I naturally hope that someone shall read it some day. And what a luckless fellow he will be..." But I could not disagree with Hayden more. My time will all his work granted all my failures and forays into the passion of the work of the practical matters of life, right.
My copy of the book has my record of meeting Hayden at many readings (and its not like he was running the roadshows like the Rolling Stones) with signaturs from 1989, 1992, 1996, and 2001 at his Tribute Birthday Gala Event in NYC a Cooper Union -- a night of great people and poets on the stage.
This book of poems might not slip into your Rilkean "Panther" classical-romanticism or be that Sylvia Path dance naked (with Ted Hughes' diction) across the autobiographical page -- but there is all that and more in this slime, long titled work that committed me to poetry, to trying to be a poet for life. Just dare to the long poem "Mother" and you will be able to ride the journalistic, philosophical, sprung rhythms, the Berryman, the Clampitt, the Rich, the Dobyns, the Carver, the energy of a man channeling the world for all his is worth!
After the day, reading and reading Hayden's book, I went to his reading at St. Michaels College ... and ever since I have ponder every inch of Hayden's work, written him letters throughout the 90's when I getting my MFA at Columbia and into the 21st century before his passing. I always marveled, when I look back at my ungrammatical raving, British-Invasion crazed letters of praise and wonder I sent to Hayden, that I always received a beautifully typed letter, then a few dot-matrix letters, but always a healthy chunk of mind and a page of two in response. This labor of reflection to reach out to a babbling-boy, poet wannabe Vermont kid, pre easy Facebook five second soundbites, as I said always amazed me and still holds a place in my writer heart of deep gratitude.
Since 1992, I have been cobbling at literary reflections and the special collections of his papers at UVM hoping some day to be a biographer of his work/life (whatever a biography of any person especially a writer could be -- but there is some Existential glue of life in the process for a earnest, writing immersed, human vision of a biography). Some day I hope to be that proud man or "reader with steely eyes" as he says in his first journal (as a fledgling writer) started March 29th, 1942 ... where he wrote, "I naturally hope that someone shall read it some day. And what a luckless fellow he will be..." But I could not disagree with Hayden more. My time will all his work granted all my failures and forays into the passion of the work of the practical matters of life, right.
My copy of the book has my record of meeting Hayden at many readings (and its not like he was running the roadshows like the Rolling Stones) with signaturs from 1989, 1992, 1996, and 2001 at his Tribute Birthday Gala Event in NYC a Cooper Union -- a night of great people and poets on the stage.
This book of poems might not slip into your Rilkean "Panther" classical-romanticism or be that Sylvia Path dance naked (with Ted Hughes' diction) across the autobiographical page -- but there is all that and more in this slime, long titled work that committed me to poetry, to trying to be a poet for life. Just dare to the long poem "Mother" and you will be able to ride the journalistic, philosophical, sprung rhythms, the Berryman, the Clampitt, the Rich, the Dobyns, the Carver, the energy of a man channeling the world for all his is worth!
February 1, 2025
“Mother, now at last I just speak to you. The hour, so late but even so, has come.
Mother, after sixty-one and a half years of my life,
After one and one-quarter years of your death,
After you incomprehensible durance and anguish, which deranges me still,
After the wordless years between us, our unutterable, constricted, strangling chaos,
After the long years of my private wrecked language, when my mind shook in the tempests of fear,
After everything between us is done and never to be undone, so that no speech matters,
Nevertheless I must speak.”
—from “I. The Event,” p. 59
And speak he does in this collection, the most visceral poems being the seven pieces about his mother that conclude this volume.
Favorite Poems:
“Not Transhistorical Death, or at Least Not Quite”
“An Expatiation on the Combining of Weathers at Thirty-Seventh and Indiana Where the Southern More or Less Crosses the Dog”
“The Impossible Indispensability of the ‘Ars Poetica’”
“Of Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets”
“I. The Event”
“2. The Water”
“3. The Ship”
“4. The Phantasmagoria”
“5. The Mother”
“6. The Son”
“7. The Death”
Mother, after sixty-one and a half years of my life,
After one and one-quarter years of your death,
After you incomprehensible durance and anguish, which deranges me still,
After the wordless years between us, our unutterable, constricted, strangling chaos,
After the long years of my private wrecked language, when my mind shook in the tempests of fear,
After everything between us is done and never to be undone, so that no speech matters,
Nevertheless I must speak.”
—from “I. The Event,” p. 59
And speak he does in this collection, the most visceral poems being the seven pieces about his mother that conclude this volume.
Favorite Poems:
“Not Transhistorical Death, or at Least Not Quite”
“An Expatiation on the Combining of Weathers at Thirty-Seventh and Indiana Where the Southern More or Less Crosses the Dog”
“The Impossible Indispensability of the ‘Ars Poetica’”
“Of Distress Being Humiliated by the Classical Chinese Poets”
“I. The Event”
“2. The Water”
“3. The Ship”
“4. The Phantasmagoria”
“5. The Mother”
“6. The Son”
“7. The Death”
February 1, 2017
Beautiful book! I loved every poem and I rarely say that about any collection of poetry. So much wisdom and understanding in these poems. I will be going back to read them over again. I recommend this book very highly.
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April 12, 2013811.54 C3198te 1989
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews