The Eternal City: Poems (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets Book 55)

Chosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon to relaunch the prestigious Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets under his editorship, __The Eternal City__ revives Princeton's tradition of publishing some of today’s best poetry. With an epigraph from Freud comparing the mind to a landscape in which all that ever was still persists, __The Eternal City__ offers eloquent testimony to the struggle to make sense of the present through conversation with the past. Questioning what it means to possess and to be possessed by objects and technologies, Kathleen Graber’s collection brings together the elevated and the quotidian to make neighbors of Marcus Aurelius, Klaus Kinski, Walter Benjamin, and Johnny Depp. Like Aeneas, who escapes Troy carrying his father on his back, the speaker of these intellectually and emotionally ambitious poems juggles the weight of private and public history as she is transformed from settled resident to pilgrim. \_\_\_\_\_\_ **From __The Eternal City__:** **WHAT I MEANT TO SAY** __Kathleen Graber__ ? In three weeks I will be gone. Already my suitcase stands overloaded at the door. I’ve packed, unpacked, & repacked it, making it tell me again & again what it couldn’t hold. Some days it’s easy to see the signifi cant insignificance of everything, but today I wept all morning over the swollen, optimistic heart of my mother’s favorite newscaster, which suddenly blew itself to stillness. I have tried for weeks to predict the weather on the other side of the world: I don’t want to be wet or overheated. I’ve taken out __The Complete Shakespeare__ to make room for a slicker. And I’ve changed my mind & put it back. Soon no one will know what I mean when I speak. Last month, after graduation, a student stopped me just outside the University gates despite a downpour. He wanted to tell me that he loved best James Schuyler’s poem for Auden. __So much to remember__, he recited in the rain, as the shops began to close their doors around us. __I thought he would live__ __a long time. He did not__. Then, a car loaded with his friends pulled up honking & he hopped in. There was no chance to linger & talk. Today I slipped into the bag between two shoes that book which begins with a father digging--even though my father was no farmer & planted ever only one myrtle late in his life & sat in the yard all that summer watching it grow as he died, a green tank of oxygen suspirating behind him. If the suitcase were any larger, no one could lift it. I’m going away for a long time, but it may not be forever. There are tragedies I haven’t read. Kyle, bundle up. You’re right. It’s hard to say simply what is true. __For Kyle Booten__ ? Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award With an epigraph from Freud comparing the mind to a landscape in which all that ever was still persists, The Eternal City offers eloquent testimony to the struggle to make sense of the present through conversation with the past. Questioning what it means to possess and to be possessed by objects and technologies, Kathleen Graber's award-winning second collection of poetry brings together the elevated and the quotidian to make neighbors of Marcus Aurelius, Klaus Kinski, Walter Benjamin, and Johnny Depp. Like Aeneas, who escapes Troy carrying his father on his back, the speaker of these intellectually and emotionally ambitious poems juggles the weight of private and public history as she is transformed from settled resident to pilgrim. Contents Tolle! Lege! I The Magic Kingdom Dead Man Florum Principi The Drunkenness of Noah Fitzcarraldo The Third Day The Heresies Un Chien Andalou The Synthetic A Priori II The Eternal City Book One Book Two Book Three Book Four Book Five Book Six Book Seven Book Eight Book Nine Book Ten Book Eleven Book Twelve III Another Poem about Trains What I Meant to Say Some Great Desire Three Poems for Walter Benjamin No Lightsome Thing Angels Unawares Letter from Cornwall Letter from Gozo The Festival at Nikko Acknowledgments Notes