Walt Whitman Bathing: Poems

By David Wagoner

When David Wagoner's last
collection, Through the Forest: New and Selected Poems, was published,
Harold Bloom noted that Wagoner's "study of American nostalgias is
as eloquent and moving as that of James Wright, and like Wright's poetry
carries on some of the deepest currents in American verse." The same
could be said of Walt Whitman Bathing, in which Wagoner's poems
range from the lyric to the satiric, the elegiac to the transcendental,
the autobiographical to the visionary.
Other comments on Wagoner's
earlier works:
"Wagoner has the visual
acuity of his loved hawks and a lifelong absorption with living and growing
things. A lovely wit and a lively intelligence inform these poems."
-- Maxine Kumin
"When Wagoner looks at
something, he brings it to vivid and immediate life through an extraordinary
power with a simple name: love. He is as formally various as Thomas Hardy,
as playful as Dickinson, as wry as Frost." -- Dave Smith
"A sharp-eyed, even gutsy
nature poet, the deftest and tenderest of love poets, Wagoner is a verbal
magician capable of surprising, sometimes crazy tours de force."
-- X. J. Kennedy

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252065700
• ISBN13: 9780252065705
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 104 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Simple and Stunning

The power of the word. The poem 'Walt Whitman Bathing' deserves a special Pulitzer Prize alone. Written a simple clauses, the poem is loaded with words that made me stop, think, and read on, again and again. Wagoner's arc in this collection is from childhood to old age. The words stayed the same. The context changed. And this is who we are. Give this book to someone as a gift. Gift. What a beautiful word. Wagoner. Another.