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    Collected Poems: Water Walker and 19 Masks for the Naked Poet
    Collected Poems: Water Walker and 19 Masks for the Naked Poet
    Collected Poems: Water Walker and 19 Masks for the Naked Poet
    Ebook145 pages53 minutes

    Collected Poems: Water Walker and 19 Masks for the Naked Poet

    By Nancy Willard and Regina Shekerjian

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    About this ebook

    The lyrical poems of award-winning author Nancy Willard celebrate the magic of life     

    Nancy Willard, who was the first recipient of a Newbery Medal for a volume of poetry, displays her versatility in these companion collections.

    Divided into five sections, Water Walker blends the mundane with the mystical. From sleeping fish to Marco Polo to a tortoise who dispenses unique advice to a bride on her wedding day, these poems integrate fables, nursery rhymes, hymns, and songs.

    In 19 Masks for the Naked Poet, the human soul reveals itself, as we remove the disguises that bind (and blind) us to everyday life. Fanciful images of nature—dozing bees, green lions—infuse this collection. Doors become mirrors and husbands float above their marital beds as Willard explores themes of family, love, spirituality, politics, and immortality. Her “poet” experiences everything from the sacred to the profane, from photographing his heart to meeting God in creations that are enchanting and surreal.     

    This ebook includes illustrations by Regina Shekerjian.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 22, 2014
    ISBN9781480481541
    Collected Poems: Water Walker and 19 Masks for the Naked Poet
    Author

    Nancy Willard

    Nancy Willard has loved William Blake’s poetry from the day she first heard it. While writing the poems in this book, she built a six-foot model of the inn, decorating it with moons, suns, stars, and prints of Blake’s paintings. The model with its residents—the characters that appear in this volume—stands in her living room. Nancy Willard published her first book when a high school senior—an inset in the Horn Book, which was called A Child’s Star. Formerly a lecturer in the English department at Vassar College, she is the author of a number of well-received children’s books, including Sailing to Cythera: And Other Anatole Stories and The Island of the Grass King: The Further Adventures of Anatole, both winners of a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. 

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      Book preview

      Collected Poems - Nancy Willard

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      Collected Poems

      Water Walker and 19 Masks for the Naked Poet

      Nancy Willard

      for Alice and in memory of Martin

      Contents

      Publisher’s Note

      I Water Walker

      A Wreath to the Fish

      The Feast of St. Tortoise

      Psalm to the Newt

      Aquarium

      Airport Lobsters

      Life at Sea: The Naming of Fish

      Poem Made of Water

      A Psalm for Running Water

      II The Road

      In Praise of Unwashed Feet

      A Hardware Store As Proof of the Existence of God

      Missionaries Among the Heathen

      The Unspeakable Telephone

      Coming to the Depot

      In the Stretch Limousine

      Science Fiction

      III The Garden

      Walking Poem

      Cat Rising Among the Angels

      Small Medicinal Poem

      For Karen

      Ilse’s Sleep

      Marriage Amulet

      A Psalm for Vineyards

      Bedtime Story

      The Teachings of the Jade

      Roots

      Onionlight

      The Potato Picker

      The Weeder

      Preserves

      God Enters the Swept Field

      Memorial Day in Union City, Michigan

      Little Elegy with Books and Beasts

      IV Songs

      The Goose, the Fox, and the Snake Advise a Rabbit

      The Cat to His Dinner

      A Cautionary Tale

      The Games of Night

      Magic Story for Falling Asleep

      Night Song

      Two Songs: An Exchange with Peter Beagle

      V Saints Lose Back (The Poems Behind the Headlines)

      Saints Lose Back

      Buffalo Climbs Out of Cellar

      Giants Meet Reviving Eagles on Monday Night

      Tigers Shake Up Pitchers Again

      Foxes Fall to St. Francis

      Angels Shade Vida

      Roach Paces North Stars

      Giants Anxious for Skins

      Angels’ Singer Stops Orioles

      Stone Leads Ladies Golf

      Four Seeds Defeated at Wimbledon

      Giant Streak Snarls Race

      Field Collapses Behind Patullo

      Ailing Stomach Delays Swan

      Wayward Lass Wins Mother Goose

      Nets Halt Suns

      Sun Accused of Illegal Purchases

      Stars Nip Wings

      Divine Child Rolls On

      19 Masks for the Naked Poet

      The Poet Takes a Photograph of His Heart

      The Poet Runs a Race with the Brooklyn Bridge

      The Poet Meets God Who Is Riding on a Pig

      The Poet Invites the Moon for Supper

      The Poet Plants a Forest in His Wife’s Marimba

      The Poet Calls to the Radio

      The Poet Writes Many Letters

      The Poet Elects Himself President

      The Poet Enters the Sleep of the Bees

      The Poet Folds to His Heart a Thousand Women

      The Poet Turns His Enemy Into a Pair of Wings

      The Poet Loses His Name in a Well

      Putting His Finger in the Dyke, He Saves All Holland

      The Poet Tracks Down the Moon

      The Baker’s Wife Tells His Horoscope With Pretzels

      Two Hundred Cats Apply Their Tongues for His Bath

      The Poet Stumbles Upon the Astronomer’s Orchards

      The Poet’s Wife Watches Him Enter the Eye of the Snow

      The Poet’s Wife Makes Him a Door So He Can Find the Way Home.

      About the Author

      Publisher’s Note

      Long before they were ever written down, poems were organized in lines. Since the invention of the printing press, readers have become increasingly conscious of looking at poems, rather than hearing them, but the function of the poetic line remains primarily sonic. Whether a poem is written in meter or in free verse, the lines introduce some kind of pattern into the ongoing syntax of the poem’s sentences; the lines make us experience those sentences differently. Reading a prose poem, we feel the strategic absence of line.

      But precisely because we’ve become so used to looking at poems, the function of line can be hard to describe. As James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, Line has no identity except in relation to other elements in the poem, especially the syntax of the poem’s sentences. It is not an abstract concept, and its qualities cannot be described generally or schematically. It cannot be associated reliably with the way we speak or breathe. Nor can its function be understood merely from its visual appearance on the page. Printed books altered our relationship to poetry by allowing us to see

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