{"product_id":"9781400836109","title":"The Eternal City","description":"\u003cp\u003eChosen by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon to relaunch the prestigious Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets under his editorship, \u003ci\u003eThe Eternal City\u003c\/i\u003e revives Princeton's tradition of publishing some of today’s best poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e With an epigraph from Freud comparing the mind to a landscape in which all that ever was still persists, \u003ci\u003eThe Eternal City\u003c\/i\u003e offers eloquent testimony to the struggle to make sense of the present through conversation with the past. Questioning what it means to possess and to be possessed by objects and technologies, Kathleen Graber’s collection brings together the elevated and the quotidian to make neighbors of Marcus Aurelius, Klaus Kinski, Walter Benjamin, and Johnny Depp. Like Aeneas, who escapes Troy carrying his father on his back, the speaker of these intellectually and emotionally ambitious poems juggles the weight of private and public history as she is transformed from settled resident to pilgrim.\u003cbr\u003e______\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e  \u003cb\u003eFrom \u003ci\u003eThe Eternal City\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWHAT I MEANT TO SAY\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eKathleen Graber\u003c\/i\u003e ?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e In three weeks I will be gone. Already my suitcase stands\u003cbr\u003eoverloaded at the door. I’ve packed, unpacked, \u0026amp; repacked it,\u003cbr\u003emaking it tell me again \u0026amp; again what it couldn’t hold.\u003cbr\u003eSome days it’s easy to see the signifi cant insignificance\u003cbr\u003eof everything, but today I wept all morning over the swollen,\u003cbr\u003eoptimistic heart of my mother’s favorite newscaster,\u003cbr\u003ewhich suddenly blew itself to stillness. I have tried for weeks\u003cbr\u003eto predict the weather on the other side of the world: I don’t want\u003cbr\u003eto be wet or overheated. I’ve taken out \u003ci\u003eThe Complete Shakespeare\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003eto make room for a slicker. And I’ve changed my mind\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp; put it back. Soon no one will know what I mean when I speak.\u003cbr\u003eLast month, after graduation, a student stopped me just outside\u003cbr\u003ethe University gates despite a downpour. He wanted to tell me\u003cbr\u003ethat he loved best James Schuyler’s poem for Auden.\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eSo much to remember\u003c\/i\u003e, he recited in the rain, as the shops\u003cbr\u003ebegan to close their doors around us. \u003ci\u003eI thought he would live\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ea long time. He did not\u003c\/i\u003e. Then, a car loaded with his friends\u003cbr\u003epulled up honking \u0026amp; he hopped in. There was no chance to linger\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp; talk. Today I slipped into the bag between two shoes that book\u003cbr\u003ewhich begins with a father digging--even though my father\u003cbr\u003ewas no farmer \u0026amp; planted ever only one myrtle late in his life\u003cbr\u003e\u0026amp; sat in the yard all that summer watching it grow as he died,\u003cbr\u003ea green tank of oxygen suspirating behind him. If the suitcase\u003cbr\u003ewere any larger, no one could lift it. I’m going away for a long time,\u003cbr\u003ebut it may not be forever. There are tragedies I haven’t read.\u003cbr\u003eKyle, bundle up. You’re right. It’s hard to say simply what is true.\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eFor Kyle Booten\u003c\/i\u003e ?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47167825805552,"sku":"9781400836109","price":22.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781400836109_p0.jpg?v=1763712498","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781400836109","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}