Something Shining: Poems FROM OUR EDITORS
Poet, world traveler, and eloquent food enthusiast, Daniel Halpern is also one of our leading literary editors. He founded and now directs Ecco Press, a literary press that consistently publishes outstanding books of poems and is now an imprint of HarperCollins. For 25 years, Halpern
also edited Antaeus, a leading literary journal that he started with Paul Bowles.
This winter, two books that showcase Halpern's dual talents as writer and editor have been released, both of which show the fruits of several decades of literary labor. Something Shining is his eighth book of verse, and in it, for the first time, Halpern writes about the wonders of fatherhood. With a series of poems about his daughter's fingers, questions, and fears, Halpern details the change a young child can bring to a worldview. The Art of the Story, a lively anthology of contemporary short stories selected by Halpern, offers a peek into the varied worlds of writers from around the globe.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
These poems explore relations between lovers, between friends, between fathers and children. Written by the light of a young daughter's presence these poems ponder the fading of the body and the struggle that consciousness wages to keep the self afloat. And into this intimate world also enter a surprising array of characters: ancient Chinese poets and modern Cuban musicians, Charlie Parker, Chekhov, and the dervish mystic Rumi. But it is the poet's awareness of his own frailty ("the days run out - no longer oneself," he writes in "Fugue"), that, together with the extraordinary beauty he discovers in environments familiar and exotic, unifies this collection.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Elegies, ghazals, epigrams, travel poems, and domestic verses present Halpern (Foreign Neon) as an articulate, amiable, comfortable, middle-aged man contemplating, in this ninth collection, mortality, fatherhood, friendship, food and wine--sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. While alert to nuances of feeling, Halpern's lines lack acoustic and formal interest: many seem inert both aurally and intellectively. In one quietly celebratory poem, "We place beach chairs just beyond the tidal line/ and here we sit. Shorts and T-shirts. Yet not wholly here." "Direction" explains portentously "my path is not destined/ although the one direction now is forward." "Midnight: Triadic Ghazal" makes this its central image: "In the dark we walk through rooms/ familiar as questions/ asked of us over and over." And in the entirely predictable "Dance," "The evening moves on the heat of the rhythm." Sometimes Halpern seems to be trying for camp, as in the bathetic Latinity of "Infestation" ("gentle sleep/ that's said to be indispensable/ for cerebral stability") or at the end of "Beauty & Restraint": "even the sun, hovering in this paradise,/ eventually goes down." But most of the poems come across as sincere and slack, with the genuinely campy "Carnival Food" and "Carnival Mood," and a diverting sestina-like poem in five-line stanzas, coming across as the only real inventions. Halpern seems content with careful records of his feelings and deeds. It's hard to imagine readers will feel the same. (Nov.) FYI: Halpern co-founded the Ecco Press, now a Harper imprint, and remains its editorial director. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
For 30 years, Halpern has demonstrated multiple literary talents as cofounder (with the late Paul Bowles) of the literary magazine Antaeus, publisher of Ecco Press (and then, postacquisition, editorial director of Ecco Press: HarperCollins), gourmet-traveler (Halpern's Guide to Essential Restaurants in Italy), and editor of quality anthologies. As with prior work (e.g., Tango, LJ 1/87), the poems in his ninth book of poetry reveal how much he cares about classic writers (Chekhov, Li Po, Machado), the New England coast ("the hillside terraced to the sea/ with flowers"), and things of light (in language and nature). Like art itself, the subjects of this poetry--conversation, music, vintage wine--are composed of "things fitting together, whether in the hand/ or mind." Tributes to his daughter ("our first light"), loving and more personal, give these stylish poems a delicate sense of passing time and by extension signify a larger world of family, friendship, and "the pure pleasure/ of sharing one thing with another." "High/ above the darkening," Halpern's eye is on "something shining."--Frank Allen, Northampton Community Coll., Tannersville, PA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
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