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Of No Country I Know

New and Selected Poems and Translations

David Ferry’s Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations provides a wonderful gathering of the work of one of the great American poetic voices of the twentieth century. It brings together his new poems and translations, collected here for the first time; his books Strangers and Dwelling Places in their entirety; selections from his first book, On the Way to the Island; and selections from his celebrated translations of the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh, the Odes of Horace, and of Virgil’s Eclogues. This is Ferry’s fullest and most resonant book, demonstrating the depth and breadth of forty years of a life in poetry.

"Though Ferry is perhaps best known for his eloquent translations of Horace and Virgil, "Of No Country I Know" demonstrates that he deserves acclaim for his own poetry as well."—Carmela Ciuraru, New York Times Book Review

Read an excerpt.


310 pages | 6-1/8 x 8-1/2 | © 1999

Phoenix Poets

Poetry

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Alan Shapiro
Acknowledgments
NEW POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS
Part I
What’s Playing Tonight
Character Analysis of Mary in Earlier Life
At Lake Hopatcong
Wolf Woman
Little Vietnam Futurist Poem
Song of the Drunkard
Movie Star Peter at the Supper for Street People
On a Poem by Arthur R. Gold
Wallenda
Backyard Dog
The License Plate
An Alphabet
Part II
My Harvest
An Autumn Afternoon
Courtesy
Down by the River
Hälfte des Lebens
An die Parzen
Roman Elegy X
News from Mount Amiata
About Sylvia’s Stories and Teaching
She Speaks Across the Years
That Evening at Dinner
Multas per gentes
Shubshi-meshre-Shakkan
Old People
The Chair
from ON THE WAY TO THE ISLAND (1960)
Part I
The Late-Hour Poem
The Bird
The Soldier
At a Bar
Out in the Cold
A Farewell
In the Dark
Learning from History
Part II
Augury
The Embarkation for Cythera
On the Way to the Island
Quand vous serez bien vieille
The Crippled Girl, The Rose
Musings of Mind and Body
Part III
Poems of Marianne Moore
Johnson on Pope
Dog and Fox
The Unawkward Singers
What It Does
Part IV
By the Sea Shore
The Beach at Evening
Descriptive
Aubade
Envoi
STRANGERS: A BOOK OF POEMS (1983)
Part I
A Tomb at Tarquinia
At the Bus Stop; Eurydice
Ellery Street
My Mother’s Dying
Several Voices
A Night-Time River Road
Part II
On a Sunday Morning
Sculptures by Dimitri Hadzi
Evening News I
Evening News II
Part III
Caprimulgidae
A Charm
On Haystack Mountain
The Waiting
Table Talk
Cythera
In Eden
A Walk in the Woods
Seen Through a Window
Out at Lanesville
Part IV
To Sestius
La Farandola dei Fanciulli
In Balance
Part V
A Telephone Call
At the Hospital
At the Hospital
To Sally
At the Hospital
Part VI
After Spotsylvania Court House
Photographs from a Book: Six Poems
Graveyard
Counterpart
Part VII
Rereading Old Writing
DWELLING PLACES: POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS (1993)
Part I
Strabo Reading Megasthenes
Dives
The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People
Committee
Civilization and Its Discontents
The Blind People
The Proselyte
Part II
A Young Woman
Goodnight
Nocturnal
Abyss
Name
Of Rhyme
Epigram
Autumn
Garden Dog
Horses
Unos Caballos
Roof
A Morning Song
Of Violets
Levis Exsurgit Zephirus
Herbsttag
The Lesson
In the Garden
Roman Elegy VIII
When We Were Children
Part III
Mnemosyne
Part IV
Harvesters Resting
Mary in Old Age
Prayer to the Gods of the Night
Envoi
from GILGAMESH: A NEW RENDERING IN ENGLISH VERSE (1992)
Tablet VII
Tablet VIII
from THE ODES OF HORACE: A TRANSLATION (1997)
To Leuconoë (i.11)
To Varus (i.18)
To the Republic (i.14)
Cleopatra (i.37)
Of the God’s Power (i.34)
To Tyndaris (i.17)
To His Lyre (i.32)
To Virgil (i.24)
from THE ECLOGUES OF VIRGIL (1999)
Eclogue Five
Eclogue Nine
TWO EPISTLES OF HORACE (1998-)
To Florus (ii.2)
Envoi (i.13)
Notes

Awards

The Boston Book Review: Bingham Poetry Prize
Won

Academy of American Poets: Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Won

The Library of Congress: Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry
Won

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