Customer Reviews (1)

a down-to-earth purity
Editor Heller uses the phrase above to describe the poetry of CR, who died at 100 last year.The poet had a remarkable life, trying law school and med school before settling on social work (administration and psychotherapy) at which he worked for 40 years, while mostly not writing poetry.He began writing again in the 1960s, and this book contains analysis, interviews, bibliography, and appreciations of a practical plain-spoken idealist with feet on the ground, a vast store of knowledge, a multilingual, multicultural background, and much to say. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

beautiful book
Rakosi's an oft underappreciated member of the objectivist crew (along with Oppen, Zukofsky, and Reznikoff). This is the best introduction I've found to his work. One sample (unusual for him in that it's rhymey, but a good sampling of the pure power of his language):

Gigantic Walker

God, if I were up so high,
Where you wade across the sky
I'd scoop into your pool of blue,
And let the clear light trickle through.

Stoop, and lift me to your knees
Gigantic Walker of the Skies;
Lend me your sun and all your eyes
and I will make a poem of these. ... Read more

Book Description
Poetry. Carl Rakosi remains a key figure in the group of poets formerly known as the Objectivists, that began to publish in the early 1930's. Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, and George Oppen have been associated with the group. Today Carl Rakosi continues to write poetry and essays and to give public readings. THE OLD POET'S TALE includes 56 previously uncollected poems, and a new essay, "Reflections on my Medium". With the publication of THE EARTH SUITE in 1997 Etruscan Books began to publish Rakosi's COLLECTED WORKS, continued in THE OLD POET'S TALE and two forthcoming volumes. ... Read more

Product Description
In his first collection of poetry since Amulet (1967), Carl Rakosi again probes the minutiae of everyday experience, expressing, as one reviewer has put it, and attentiveness "to the ordinary until the ordinary ceases to be so. . . ." But the poetic voice wiser and more mature, yet no less humorous or lyrical now addresses itself with greater frequency to public issues.

Nevertheless, Ere-Voice is not weighted exclusively with the poetry of social protest in its usual sense. For in his own words, Rakosi a leading member of the Objectivist Group that included, among others, Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff and George Oppen seeks primarily "to present objects in their most essential reality and to make of each poem an object. . . meaning by this, obviously, the opposite of a subject; the opposite, in other words, of all forms of personal vagueness; of loose bowels and streaming, sometimes screaming, consciousness." ... Read more