Sexual politics, social awareness, literary irreverence—Carolyn Kizer is the indisputable grande dame of American letters. Never afraid to say what is on her mind, in her poetry Kizer has always done so with both grace and flair. For four decades she has been one of the most influential, controversial, and recognizable figures in American poetry: as an early feminist, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, as a Roethke student, as the first director of the National Endowment for the Arts’s literary program, as a member of the board of The Academy of American Poets (from which she resigned, in protest, in 1999), and as the founding editor of the influential Poetry Northwest. Cool, Calm & Collected is a "new and collected" volume by one of Copper Canyon Press’s all-time bestselling poets. It gathers new poems together with work from all of Kizer’s eight previous volumes, several of which have been unavailable for many years. from "Pro Femina" From Sappho to myself, consider the fate of women. How unwomanly to discuss it! Like a noose or an albatross necktie The clinical sobriquet hangs us: cod-piece coveters. Never mind these epithets; I myself have collected some honeys. Juvenal set us apart in denouncing our vices Which had grown, in part, from having been set apart: Women abused their spouses, cuckolded them, even plotted To poison them. Sensing, behind the violence of his manner— "Think I’m crazy or drunk?"—his emotional stake in us, As we forgive Strindberg and Nietzsche, we forgive all those Who cannot forget us. We are hyenas. Yes, we admit it… Carolyn Kizer was born in Spokane, Washington in 1925 and currently lives in Sonoma, California. She is the author of eight previous books of poetry, two collections of essays, and has edited several anthologies and volumes of translations. Her collection Yin won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize. Also available by Carolyn Kizer Harping On PB $12.00, 1-55659-115-2 • CUSA HC y $22.00, 1-55659-114-4 • CUSA Mermaids in the Basement PB $10.00, 0-914742-81-7 • CUSA Proses: On Poems and Poets PB $12.00, 1-55659-045-8 • CUSA Yin PB Kizer's passionate, witty poetry has graced American letters for four decades, and, like a championship rose, it has been lovely in every period, from the tight, budlike, formal early work down to the big, blowsy poems of recent times. This fine collection happily includes ample sections of biographical prose as well as of verse translations and previously unpublished poems. Not that Kizer's work demands a biographical trellis. For, while never strictly a confessional poet, Kizer has provided personal context within each poem. One of the most striking aspects of her work is how avant-garde it appears--in terms of theme and voice, not of style. Her earliest book included poems in which she assumed the personae of goddesses; they remain more energetically feminine and feminist than many published yesterday. She has been vividly aware of female poets' dual roles as "handmaidens / To our own goddess . . . narcissists by necessity." Most powerfully, she has written of woman's struggle to speak and be heard in the multipartite poem "Pro Femina," which was published in sections over many decades. Most recently, Kizer has produced dozens of tender, passionate poems of age and loss, and she has defined herself as "yoked in sympathy for all that's human." The stately power of her verse has never failed her. No library should be without this collection. Patricia Monaghan Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Maryam What Is True Tirade For The Next-to-last Act Bangla Desh: 1 Bangla Desh: 2. The Blood In My Eyes Bangla Desh: 3. Revisited After The Holocuast, 1973 Elegy For Hassan Nasir If I Were Certain Flood At The International Writing Program My Sister's Letter On The Way Back Professional Poet Prostitution When I Came Back Bits Of Reminiscence Brother, I Am Here Missing You Perhaps ...; For The Loneliness Of An Author Returning Home The Singing Flower To --- To The Oak Unexpected Meeting When You Come Past My Window Spring-gazing Song: 1 Spring-gazing Song: 2 Weaving Love-knots: 1 Weaving Love-knots: 2 '?.!' After Basho Afternoon Happiness Afterthoughts Of Donna Elvira An American Beauty Amusing Our Daughters Anniversaries: Claremont Avenue, From 1945 Antique Father The Apostate Arthur's Party The Ashes Birthday Poem For A Childless Man Bitch The Blessing By The Riverside Children Columns And Caryatids: 1. The Wife Columns And Caryatids: 2. The Mother Columns And Caryatids: 3. The Lover Complex Autumnal The Copulating Gods Cultural Evolution Cupid And Venus The Damnation Dangerous Games Days Of Q986 The Death Of A Public Servant; In Memoriam, Herbert Norman Dixit Insipiens Dream Of A Large Lady The Dying Goddess Election Day, 1984 Eleutheria Epithalamion Exodus Fearful Women Fin-de-siecle Blues Final Meeting The First Of June Again The Flower Food Of Love For Jan As