Title: The abundance of nothing : poems /
Authors: Weigl, Bruce, 1949-
Publisher: TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press,
Year: 2012
Subjects: Poetry
Abstract: Throughout his award-winning career, Bruce Weigl has proven himself to be a poet of extraordinary emotional acuity and consummate craftsmanship. In "The Abundance of Nothing," these qualities are on full display, animating and informing poems that combine rich, metaphoric imagery with direct, powerful language. Deftly weaving history and everyday experience, Weigl transports readers from the front lines of the Vietnam War and all the tangled cultural and emotional scenes of that time to the slow winds of the American Midwest that softly ease the voice of the veteran returning home. Though the poems struggle with themes of mortality and illness, violence and forgiveness, the poet s voice never wavers in its meditative calm, poise, and compassion. Elegiac yet agile, ethereal yet embodied, "The Abundance of Nothing" is a work of searching openness, generous insight, and remarkable grace. -- Publisher marketing.
Contents: Quiet fountain -- The end of my career in dance -- Conundrum -- My checkered past -- Thank you for thinking of you -- I almost didn't see -- In the rest of the world, the worry is very big -- Ice storm -- My dimension -- Elegy for the dead, whom I love -- Self-portrait after "Hotel Insomnia" -- Johnny -- The caves at Bai Non Nuoc -- Bill -- The room -- My life with cats -- Pastoral as complaint -- My mother, fading -- One lie -- My nymphomaniac -- For my neighbors -- Self-portrait in the third person at fifty-eight -- Reunion -- The country that we love -- Elegy for Anna N. -- The way Dante moved Virgil through Hell -- My waiting brain -- Blues for Que Mai -- On the Little Juniata River -- The abundance of nothing -- What the matter was -- Paradise of pain -- For Penelope -- When I'm gone -- The world, Part I -- This boy -- Elegy for Liam -- What are you going to do -- Gate -- Letter to L. -- Beginning -- Wrong -- She said, "but it was only a small hurt" -- The deer cave drawing in Southern China that the Chinese girl drew on the napkin to show me exactly where the character now used for the word deer came from -- A little place on the beach -- Response to "Why don't you write about something happy?" -- To no spirits speak -- South Lorain suite -- The father in me -- Apocryphal weather -- Roses for the reader -- The future -- Flash -- Meditation after prayer.