Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991

Abandoned Ranch, Big Bend
Adolf Eichmann
Aeolian
Algeria
Alive
All Things
Almanach Du Printemps Vivarois
Anent Socrates, Or Somebody
Anima
Anxious View Of A Tree
Assignment
August
August 14, 1961
August First
A Backyard In California
The Baler
The Bearer
Bears At Raspberry Time
Billie Holiday
The Birds Of Vietnam
The Birth Of Venus
The Bitcheries Of Madison Avenue
Block
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
The Bloomingdale Papers, Sels.
Bouquet In Dog Time
The Buddhist Painter Prepares To Paint
Burning Dawn
Cappadocian Song
Capper Kaplinski At The North Side Cue Club
Carnations
Cave Painting
The Chase In Spring
Chicory
Coming Down To The Desert At Lordburg, N.m.
Comparative Iconography
Concerning Necessity
Continuo
The Cows At Night
The Cowshed Blues
Cross My Heart And Hope To Die It Was The Very Same Song ...
Crow's Mark
Crucifixion
Dedicationin These Days
Ekstase, Alptraum, Schlaf In Einem Nest Von Flammen
Emergency Haying
Essay
Essay On Death
Essay On Love
Essay On Marriage
Essay On Stone
Eternal City
Eternity Blues
Etudes De Plusiers Paysages De L' Ame: 1
Etudes De Plusiers Paysages De L' Ame: 2
Etudes De Plusiers Paysages De L' Ame: 3
Etudes De Plusiers Paysages De L' Ame: 4
The Event Itself
An Excursus Of Reassurance In Begonia Time
Existence Before Essence
The Existing Pool
An Expatiation On The Combining Of Weathers At Thirty ....
Expectantly And Fearfully I Sing
The Fact Of The Matter
Family Reunion
The Far-removed Mountain Men
The Fat Lady
For Papa
For Thon Demgeorne Dreorigne Oft
Fourth
Fragment
Freedom And Discipline
French Hill
Godhulivela
Gods
Green Mountain Idyl
Haiku
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Hall Five %the Window Bars Are Spider Webs
Ho-hum Again
Homage To John Lyly And Frankie Newton
Homecoming
Horogikos
How Lewisburg, Pa., Escaped The Avenging Angel
How To
Hymn To Artemis
I Could Take
I Know, I Remember, But How Can I Help You
I Tell You For Several Years Of My Madness ...
'i've Never Seen Such A Real Hard Time Before'
If It Were Not For You
The Impossible Indispensibility Of The Ars Poetica
In Deep Winter The Sea Roams
In Memorium
In Tobey Woods
Incident Of May
The Incorrigible Dirigible
The Insomniac Sleeps Well Once And For All
Johnny Spain's White Heifer
The Joy And Agony Of Improvision
Joyhn Dryden
Lady
Lana
The Language Of Flowere, Etc.
A Leaf From Mr. Dyer's Woods
Letter To Maxine Sullivan
Light In The Locust Tree
The Line
Lines Written In An Asylum
Listen
The Little Fire In The Woods
A Little Old Funky Homeric Blues For Herm
Living Alone
Loneliness: An Outburst Of Hexasyllables
The Loon On Forrester's Pond
Lost
Marge
Marshall Washer
Marvin Mccabe
The Master, Grieved With Age
Meadow House
Meditation In The Presence Of 'ostrich Walk'
Mild Winter
Missing The Bow In The Henhouse
Mix The Ingredients
Moon-set
The Mountain
The Mountain Cabin
The Mouse
Museum Piece
My Hut
My Meadow
Names
Naming For Love
New Hartford
New Orleans
No Matter What, After All, And That Beautiful Word So
No Supervening Thought Of Grace
None
Not Transhistorical Death, Or At Least Not Quite
Notes From Robin Hill Cottage
November Jeans Song
November: Indian Summer
Of Brook And Stone
Of Distress Being Humiliated By The Classical Chinese Poets
The Oldest Killed Lake In North America
On A Certain Engagement South Of Seoul
On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam
On Canann Mountain Meadow
Once And Again
Once More
Once On A Night In Spring
Ontological Episode Of The Asylum
Opusthirteen
Ovid, Old Buddy, I Would Discourse With You A While
Pa Mccabe
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Phone
The Poet
Poetical Abstracts:1 Chronological
Poetical Abstracts:2 Metaphysical
Poetical Abstracts:3 Classicalcal
Poetical Abstracts:4 Rhopaloceral
Poetical Abstracts:5 Introspectiona;
The Point
A Post-impressionist Susurration For The First Of November
Pray You Young Woman
The President's Speech
Purana, Meaning Once Upon A Time
Questions
R.m.d.
The Ravine
Ray
Re-acquaintance
Reflexive
Regarding Chainsaws
Renaissance
Return To Love
Rimrock, Where It Is
The Rule Of The Majority Is
Rummage
Sam And Poll Go Back To The City
The Saving Way
Septic Tank
Sex
Shake, Well Before Using
Silence
Simple
The Smallish Son
The Snow: 1
The Snow: 2
The Sociology Of Toyotas And Jade Chrysanthemums
Sometimes When Lovers Lie Quietly Together, Unexpectedly ...
Song
Song Of Two Crows
Song: Luxury
Song: So Often, So Long I Have Thought
Song: The Famous Vision Of America
Song: The Old, Old Man
Song: The Young Man With The Guitar, Testing
Song:so Why Does This Dead Carnation
Songd About What Comes Down: The Complete Works Of Mr. ....
Sonnet
Sonnet
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Sonnet: 33 Sin
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The Sorrow Song
The Sound Of Snow
Sparrows
Speaking For Them
Spring 1967
Spring Notes From Robin Hill
Stepping Backward
Summer's Early End At Hudson's Bay
Sure, Said Benny Goodman
Survival As Tao, Beginning At 5:00 A.m.
Tabula Rasa
That I Had Had Courage When Young
Thaw
They Accuse Me Of Not Talking
This Decoration
This Song
Three Songs:1 Crossing
Three Songs:2 Afternoon
Three Songs:3 Transportation
To Know In Reverie The Only Phenomenology Of The Absolute
Too Tenuous
Twilight Comes
Two Romantic Pieces
Underground The Darkness Is The Light
Une Presence Absolue
Unnatural Unselection
Valentine
The Way Of The Conventicle Of The Trees
What A Wonder Among The Instraments Is The Walloping Tram...
When Howitzers Began
When I Wrote A Little
Who Cares, Long As It's B-flat
The Wild Swans At Norfolk
Woodsmoke At 70
Words For My Daughter From The Asylum
Words In A Certain Appropriate Mode
The World As Will And Representation
The Wreck Of The Circus Train
Afternoon Of A Faun: Eclogue
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Something Hayden Carruth does as well as any living writer is to treat the reader as a friend, and to provide, through his poetry, hours of good company. -- The New York Times Book Review

Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 presents all the lyric, short narrative, comic, meditative, nature, and erotic poetry the poet has chosen from the past forty-five years, including a section of new poems not found in his previous twenty-two books. It is an extraordinary literary event. Hayden Carruth has been one of the most widely published and admired American poets for many years. Noted for the breadth of his linguistic and formal resources, influenced by jazz and the blues, Carruth gives his poems--whether sexual political, or narrative--a philosophical resonance that raises them beyond the ego-centered narrowness of much contemporary writing and makes them powerfully moving. Carruth is a New Englander (now living in New York), and many of his best-known poems are about the people and places of northern Vermont. His explorations of rural poverty and hardship, sometimes grim, sometimes funny, are deeply informed by political radicalism and cultural responsibility. Carruth has been editor of Poetry, poetry editor of Harper's, for many years advisory editor of The Hudson Review, and his influential anthology, The Voice That Is Great Within Us, is the standard collection of 20th-century American poetry. He has published one novel and three collections of essays. He has been awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bollingen Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (including a 1988 Senior Fellowship), and his work has won many prizes and awards, including the Lenore Marshall/Nation Poetry Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Governor's Medal from the State of Vermont.

Hayden Carruth is the author of twenty-five books of poetry, a novel, four books of criticism, and two anthologies, and has held fellowships from the Bollingen, Guggenheim and Lannan foundations, as well as the NEA. His many awards include the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Lenore Marshall/The Nation Award.

The Cows at Night

The moon was like a full cup tonight,
too heavy, and sank in the mist
soon after dark, leaving for light

faint stars and the silver leaves
of milkweed beside the road,
gleaming before my car.

Yet I like driving at night
in summer and in Vermont:
the brown road through the mist

of mountain-dark, among farms
so quiet, and the roadside willows
opening out where I saw

the cows. Always a shock
to remember them there, those
great breathings close in the dark.

I stopped, and took my flashlight
to the pasture fence. They turned
to me where they lay, sad

and beautiful faces in the dark,
and I counted them--forty
near and far in the pasture,

turning to me, sad and beautiful
like girls very long ago
who were innocent, and sad

because they were innocent,
and beautiful because they were
sad. I switched off my light.

But I did not want to go,
not yet, nor knew what to do
if I should stay, for how

in that great darkness could I explain
anything, anything at all.
I stood by the fence. And then

very gently it began to rain.