The poems included in the "The world below the window", carefully selected by William Jay Smith, cover the entire career of one of America's acknowledged masters, a writer who deftly defies categorization. Smith melds an array of influence - from French symbolists to W.H. Auden and Wallace Stevens - into his own unmistakable voice, moving powerfully from the compressed, dark lyrics of his pre-war poetry ("Quail in Autumn") to experiments with a long free-verse line in the 1960's ("The Tin Can"). Here are memorable lyrics that capture the horror of World War II ("Dark Valentine: war poems") and hilarious light verse ("The tall poets") that exhibits the wit that has always enlivened even Smith's darkest works. Previously uncollected recent poems reveal the poet's tremendous range as he moves from discussing the ironies of age in "The shipwreck" to the dramatic intensity of "The Indian removal", a series of poems dealing with the forced removal of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi.
- ISBN10 0801858593
- ISBN13 9780801858598
- Publish Date 7 April 1998
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 30 July 2003
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 288
- Language English