And After All

by Rhina P. Espaillat

Overview

Rhina P. Espaillat's And after All meditates on the passage of time. The perspective sweeps from the panorama of foreign landmarks to the close view of a lover's feet in failing health, held and cared for. And after All displays the wit, wisdom, subtle voice, and supple mastery of forms that have established Espaillat as a contemporary master. This long-awaited collection from Espaillat is a treat not to be missed.

PRAISE FOR AND AFTER ALL

Rhina P. Espaillat's And After All combines the formal fluency of Richard Wilbur, the precision of Elizabeth Bishop, and the easy conversational tones of Frank O'Hara, and yet her poems speak in a voice that is distinctively her own. They address the loss of loved ones and loved things of the world, but their extraordinary empathy and gentle wit keep them from becoming depressing or sentimental. Savor this book and share it with people you love.
--A. M. Juster, author of Sleaze & Slander: New and Selected Comic Verse, 1995-2015

Rhina P. Espaillat, more than any living poet in English, gives ordinary language the glow of the sacred. Workaday words, trite with custom like thin coins, accrue new resonance and weight; plain objects are haloed with aureoles like figures in gold mosaics. Saints with their visions used to do this: wave away the veils that separate our shallow perceptions from a deeper reality. But not everyone is granted visions. How much harder it is to use the same words we all use and misuse, the same objects we all touch and ignore, common experiences we dismiss, and, by using words with precision, using the serendipity of rhyme, and the convention of metrical patterns, to give the reader the experience of revelation. Craft is not the opposite of inspiration, Espaillat reminds us, it is the only way to it.
--A. E. Stallings, author of Olives

For most of its poems And After All is, as the title indicates, deeply elegiac in tone. There are many poignant evocations of the past in the book, rich with quotidian surface detail but always suffused with undemonstrative but palpably real emotion. A poem about the poet's grandmother, a tough no-nonsense farmer's wife who described how cows inarticulately but unmistakably grieved when they realized their calves were to be slaughtered, ends with the line, "She told it simply, but she faltered there." In its quiet pathos the line seems to sum up much of the book; exactness, no fuss, unforced fidelity to the anecdote, but the tremor of poignant empathy always present. A very eloquent collection of beautifully crafted poems, and one that it is hard to read dry-eyed.
--Dick Davis, author of Love in Another Language

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rhina P. Espaillat has published ten full-length books and three chapbooks, comprising poetry, essays, and short stories, in both English and her native Spanish, and translations from and into both languages. Her national and international awards include the T. S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, the Richard Wilbur Award, the Howard Nemerov Prize, the May Sarton Award, the Robert Frost "Tree at My Window" Prize for translation, several honors from the New England Poetry Club, the Poetry Society of America, the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Salem State College.
She is a frequent reader, speaker, and workshop leader, and is active with the Powow River Poets, a literary group she cofounded in 1992.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773490229
Publisher:	Able Muse Press
Publication date:	04/26/2019
Pages:	130
Sales rank:	616,065
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Rhina P. Espaillat has published ten full-length books and three chapbooks, comprising poetry, essays, and short stories, in both English and her native Spanish, and translations from and into both languages. Her national and international awards include the T. S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, the Richard Wilbur Award, the Howard Nemerov Prize, the May Sarton Award, the Robert Frost "Tree at My Window" Prize for translation, several honors from the New England Poetry Club, the Poetry Society of America, the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Salem State College. She is a frequent reader, speaker, and workshop leader, and is active with the Powow River Poets, a literary group she cofounded in 1992.

Table of Contents

vi Acknowledgments

Things That Go

5 Links

6 Ephemera

7 Butchering

8 Rosario on Sunday Morning

11 Tu y Yo

13 Long Distance

14 On a Gift of Dominican Mangoes Confiscated at the Miami Airport

15 Choices

16 “Home is the place where . . .”

17 Archaeology

19 Are You Sure that You Want to Exist?

20 Agenda

21 Connection

22 Ousting the Murphys

24 Discovery

25 Look Long Enough

26 Retrospective

27 Grandson, Reading

29 Little Red Hen

30 The Wolf

31 Dying Huge Dragon

33 “Things That Go”

34 Fourteen

35 For Lincoln Gideon

36 State of the Art

37 Shelter

38 A Neighbor Speaks His Mind

39 Believer

Oh, Wow!

43 Candid View

45 Hammock

46 Choosing a Seat

48 Halfway

49 Celebration

51 Observation

52 רנא

53 On the Curious, Intimate and Reactive Nature of Human Identity

54 Seasoning

55 Oh, Wow!

56 Shower Talk

57 Retrievals

59 Familiar Faces

60 Confession

61 How Sullen She’s Become

62 Red Shoes

63 Losers Weepers

65 November

66 Trifocals

67 To My Good Left Hand

68 To My Gall Bladder

69 Too

71 The Closing Year

73 Time Travel

74 Bridges

75 In Darkened Rooms

76 Flipping Through

The Bargain

79 Late Call

80 Lighthouse, with Poet Brandishing His Hat

81 For Ronnie, One Wall Away

82 People Who Give You Things

83 For Robert, Without a Pass

84 For Ginger, Who Hummed

85 Which of the Arts You Mastered

86 Casual Losses

87 Afterthoughts

88 Trinacria

96 Nothing

99 Slow-Moving Traffic

100 Resting

101 Feet

102 Traps

103 This House

104 The Widow Considers Grief

105 The Critic

106 Portrait

107 The Sharpened Shears He Plied

108 After

109 Album

110 Condolence Call

111 How Tiresome

112 How Like a Winter . . .

113 Morning Dreams

114 Signing Off

115 The Bargain

Editorial Reviews

Rhina P. Espaillat's And After All combines the formal fluency of Richard Wilbur, the precision of Elizabeth Bishop, and the easy conversational tones of Frank O'Hara, and yet her poems speak in a voice that is distinctively her own. They address the loss of loved ones and loved things of the world, but their extraordinary empathy and gentle wit keep them from becoming depressing or sentimental. Savor this book and share it with people you love.
--A. M. Juster, author of Sleaze & Slander: New and Selected Comic Verse, 1995-2015

Rhina P. Espaillat, more than any living poet in English, gives ordinary language the glow of the sacred. Workaday words, trite with custom like thin coins, accrue new resonance and weight; plain objects are haloed with aureoles like figures in gold mosaics. Saints with their visions used to do this: wave away the veils that separate our shallow perceptions from a deeper reality. But not everyone is granted visions. How much harder it is to use the same words we all use and misuse, the same objects we all touch and ignore, common experiences we dismiss, and, by using words with precision, using the serendipity of rhyme, and the convention of metrical patterns, to give the reader the experience of revelation. Craft is not the opposite of inspiration, Espaillat reminds us, it is the only way to it.
--A. E. Stallings, author of Olives

For most of its poems And After All is, as the title indicates, deeply elegiac in tone. There are many poignant evocations of the past in the book, rich with quotidian surface detail but always suffused with undemonstrative but palpably real emotion. A poem about the poet's grandmother, a tough no-nonsense farmer's wife who described how cows inarticulately but unmistakably grieved when they realized their calves were to be slaughtered, ends with the line, "She told it simply, but she faltered there." In its quiet pathos the line seems to sum up much of the book; exactness, no fuss, unforced fidelity to the anecdote, but the tremor of poignant empathy always present. A very eloquent collection of beautifully crafted poems, and one that it is hard to read dry-eyed.
--Dick Davis, author of Love in Another Language

From the Publisher