Before Our Eyes: New and Selected Poems, 1975–2017

Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets

by Eleanor Wilner

A major new collection from the winner of the 2019 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry



Before Our Eyes gathers more than thirty new poems by Eleanor Wilner, along with representative selections from her seven previous books, to present a major overview of her distinguished body of work. A poet who engages with history in lyrical language, Wilner creates worlds that reflect on and illuminate the actual one, drawing on the power of communal myth and memory to transform them into agents of change.

In these poems, well-known figures step out of old texts to alter their stories and new figures arise out of the local air--a girl with a fury of bees in her hair, homesick statues that step down from their pedestals, a bat cave whose altar bears a judgment on our worship of war, and a frog whose spring wakening invites our own. In the process, ancient myths are naturalized while nature is newly mythologized in the service of life.

Before Our Eyes features widely anthologized works such as "Sarah's Choice" and "Reading the Bible Backwards." In the new poems, Wilner records the bewildering public shocks of the current moment, when civic life is under threat, when language itself is attacked, and when poetry's lens of collective imagination becomes a way to resist falsity, to seek meaning, and to really see what is before our eyes.

Genres: Poetry

232 pages, Paperback

Published September 17, 2019

Reviews

[Lenora Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had already marked several poems by the time I reached page 50 that I liked, and will go back to read. When I got to page 50, Moonlit Wake, I read it, and stopped. It’s not fair to claim it’s my favorite out of all the poems, but at the moment I read it, it didn’t just resonate with me, it sang to me.

“The broken moonpath on the darkened sea…”

This book is a calorie-free meal of your favorite foods topped off with a slice of Death by Chocolate cake. It is the stimulating dinner companion you’re always craved. It is the thoughtful companion for which you’ve longed.

If you like poetry, buy this book. Like that meal above, eat slowly, chew well, savor flavor and texture.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This offer a way wide of Eleanor Wilner's poetry from her seven previous collections--Wilner plays regularly with the archetypical and mythic, but often wittily subverts the common telling or dazzles with lyric charm. Impressive.

[Emma McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love poetry!!!!