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Nye, Naomi Shihab editor : What Have You Lost? Poems

Greenwillow Books, New York, 1999

ISBN 0688161847

Xvi, 205, [2] pages, well illustrated, boards, DJ, very good. First edition. Photographs by Michael Nye. A collection of poems that explore all kinds of loss. From the dust jacket: "Write your name on everything that's yours, " advises the poet Robert Dana, one of the 140 poets in this vibrant anthology of poems that ponder, in one way or another, things we lose . . . And find. " From Booklist: "I am so in love I can't find my hat. " There is nothing portentous about the contemporary poems and the occasional black-and-white photographs by Michael Nye in this anthology. The losses range from the trivial (a glove left in an airport terminal) to the tragic (a husband killed in Vietnam). In fact, as Nye points out in her splendid introduction, one reason why we fuss so much about petty losses is because we cannot bear to face the inevitable larger ones that can never be redeemed or reclaimed. This is a large collection of 140 poets, some well known (including William Stafford and Lucille Clifton) , many published here for the first time, several in translation. Different poems will grab individual readers, depending on where they are now. The full-page portraits, mostly of teens, are never literal illustrations; whether posed or candid, they make you imagine their stories. The poets' voices are so intensely personal that you just have to turn to the biographical notes at the back after you have read each poem. They speak of failure, of being a "loser, " of language (one bilingual poem is about what gets lost, not in translation, but between the happening of love or pain and its coming into words). Nuala Archer says plainly, "To lose or be lost quickens everything. " Tell English teachers about this collection; they will find it a great stimulus for students' personal writing. " FRN8-5 ; 205 pages, Very Good

First Edition

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