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Still Here, Still Now

Robert Pack is one of America’s most eminent nature poets, and his virtuoso talents are on glorious display in Still Here, Still Now, his nineteenth volume of verse. With styles ranging from lyric to narrative, and themes stretching from biblical concerns to meditations on contemporary science, Pack’s poetry is composed in strongly rhythmic cadences and a diction that is direct and accessible. In four different sections of thematically and stylistically divergent verse, Still Here, Still Now delivers many of the elements of Pack’s poetry readers have come to admire and expect—both the humorous and the elegiac.

The first section of the book contains traditional lyrics that celebrate family ties and seek consolations for the passing of personal and evolutionary time. The poems in this group address a named or unnamed auditor in a voice of intimate engagement. Featuring the most narrative selections in the book, the second section consists of fable-like stories, rich with innuendo and implication. The characters in these poems make choices that press against the events and circumstances that challenge and define them. Embodying what Harold Bloom has called Pack’s “courage to surmount suffering,” the poems of the third section are largely devoted to biblical themes and philosophical speculations on the meaning of happiness and the uses of suffering.  Here, Pack’s empathy for the human condition  as well as his forebodings about the prospect of human survival are on poignant display. The final section of the book turns to Pack’s abiding interest in landscape and the ways in which the place one inhabits contains and animates our individual lives.

Ripe with many years, Pack remains a vital presence in American letters. Still Here, Still Now is an affecting and graceful addition to the oeuvre of a poet whose compelling and distinct voice will continue to resonate among his loyal readers.

128 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2008

Literature and Literary Criticism: American and Canadian Literature

Poetry

Table of Contents

    Acknowledgements

I.  FOR YOU AND YOU
    Another March
    Facing You
    Paul Sees More Light
    Flute Music at Noon
    You Are the One
    The Blue Vase
    Mountain Dawn
    No Reconciling
    Tornado Consolation
    Moonlight Mirrorings
    The Story’s End
    Logical Speculation
    Grandson
    Comforting

II. SHORT AND TALL TALES
    Reincarnation
    Literary Ravens
    Happiness
    Four Guys Cross Montana
    The Stutterer
    Arguing Friends
    The Teacher Shakes Up His Class
    Brothers
    Pride and Laughter
    The Ecstacy
    The King’s Dilemma
    Grizzly Prayer
    The Rabbi’s Spiel to His Congregation
    Redesigned

III. MEDITATION AND FOREBODINGS
    Meditation of a Jew
    Moses
    Darwin’s Beetle
    Breaking News
    Academic Party
    Rain in August
    Mountain Meditation
    Flourishing Birches
    Wedding Ceremony
    The Peaceable Kingdon
    Afterlife
    Survival
    Choice
    Conundrum

IV. LANDSCAPES AND SELF-PORTRAITS
    It’s May Again
    Butterfly
    Tamaracks
    Spider
    It’s Only Wind
    Bear Grass
    Spring Rain
    Sleepy Dog Blues
    Sunrise
    Sunflower
    Illumination
    Old Man Walking
    Midday Moths
    This Instant Now

V. TWO EPILOGUES
    The War to End All Wars
    Make-Believe My Muse

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