The Next Bend in the Road
9780226263250
9780226263236
9780226263267
The Next Bend in the Road
"In America today there is no lyric work more compelling and well made than To the Center of the Earth," Allen Grossman wrote ten years ago of Michael Fried’s last collection of poetry. Fried’s new book, The Next Bend in the Road, is a powerfully coherent gathering of lyric and prose poems that has the internal scope of a novel with a host of characters, from the poet’s wife and daughter to Franz Kafka, Paul Cézanne, Osip Mandelstam, Sigmund Freud, Gisèle Lestrange, and many others; transformative encounters with works of art, literature, and philosophy, including Heinrich von Kleist’s "The Earthquake in Chile," Giuseppe Ungaretti’s "Veglia," and Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe; and, running through the book from beginning to end, a haunted awareness of the entanglement of the noblest accomplishments and the most intimate joys with the horrors of modern history.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
I THE SEND-OFF
The Send-Off
Days of the Comet
The Alhambra
The Tunnel
April 4, 1968
In the White Swan Hotel, Guangzhou
The Kites
Greek Restaurants
Cézanne
Care
Kafka’s Drawings
The Realm of Spirit
The Chase
Before a Duel
Papyrus
The Drought
The Rape of Nanking
The Glare
Gisèle Lestrange
The Meadow
Due North
The Dream
II THE NECT BEND IN THE ROAD
The Next Bend in the Road
Tsvetayeva’s Letters
The Curvature of Earth
"The Earthquake in Chile"
Reading
The New Year
Noa-Noa
The End of History
The Ring
A Night at the Opera
The Notebook
The Immortals
The Visitor from the Future
When You Enter the Room
The Essence of Poetry
Full Moonlight
The Drowned and the Saved
Outskirts of Berlin, May 1998
Aubade
Beauty Regardless
To Lily, a Calico Cat Who Died Before her Time
The Wound
III A SUMMER NIGHT
The First Morning
The Flower
Last Visit from Ian Hamiliton
The Hilltop
In Seattle
The Yellow Dress
The Thirty Years War
Freud’s Sacrifice
Wittenstein on Green
Fear and Trembling
For F.T.C.
Look Around
Marine
A Journey
"Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe"
"Flesh"
Yellow Crane Tower
The Fountain
A Summer Night
The Smoke-Brush
Song
The Winds of Dawn
Notes
I THE SEND-OFF
The Send-Off
Days of the Comet
The Alhambra
The Tunnel
April 4, 1968
In the White Swan Hotel, Guangzhou
The Kites
Greek Restaurants
Cézanne
Care
Kafka’s Drawings
The Realm of Spirit
The Chase
Before a Duel
Papyrus
The Drought
The Rape of Nanking
The Glare
Gisèle Lestrange
The Meadow
Due North
The Dream
II THE NECT BEND IN THE ROAD
The Next Bend in the Road
Tsvetayeva’s Letters
The Curvature of Earth
"The Earthquake in Chile"
Reading
The New Year
Noa-Noa
The End of History
The Ring
A Night at the Opera
The Notebook
The Immortals
The Visitor from the Future
When You Enter the Room
The Essence of Poetry
Full Moonlight
The Drowned and the Saved
Outskirts of Berlin, May 1998
Aubade
Beauty Regardless
To Lily, a Calico Cat Who Died Before her Time
The Wound
III A SUMMER NIGHT
The First Morning
The Flower
Last Visit from Ian Hamiliton
The Hilltop
In Seattle
The Yellow Dress
The Thirty Years War
Freud’s Sacrifice
Wittenstein on Green
Fear and Trembling
For F.T.C.
Look Around
Marine
A Journey
"Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe"
"Flesh"
Yellow Crane Tower
The Fountain
A Summer Night
The Smoke-Brush
Song
The Winds of Dawn
Notes