Research Catalog

Title

Decembers : poems / James A. Perkins.

Author

Perkins, James A., 1941-

Publication

Macon, Georgia : Mercer University Press, [2013]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 64 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"Poems of personal memories and images of the season. The poems in Decembers have been written, usually one a year, beginning in 1973 when the author moved from the South to New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, where he took a job teaching creative writing at Westminster College. They are written to accompany the Christmas cards he and his wife Jane writes each year to keep in touch with friends from college, graduate school, and earlier jobs. These poems arise out of memory, both of the author and those of others. In them Perkins is much more interested in the images of the season, the sights, the sounds, the scents, the textures, and the tastes than he is in the abstractions: joy, love, warmth, gratitude, etc. He is more interested in what the season is than in what it means. A short story that closes the book tells of how one day Perkins saw one of his December poems on Nancy Lewis's refrigerator in Bethany, Connecticut, and wondered how many other refrigerators were so decorated. The story came out of that wondering. We all have memories of the Christmas season; they are all deeply personal and unique, and yet, curiously they are all pretty much alike. Readers will find fragments of their pasts as they read these poems. Perkins is the author of Snakes, Butterbeans, and the Discovery of Electricity"--Provided by publisher.

Uniform Title

Poems. Selections

Alternative Title

Poems.

Subject

December > Poetry

Genre/Form

Poetry

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Machine generated contents note: By the Rivers of Babylon (1973) -- Owl Cries (1974) -- Dr. Zhivago Remembers (1975) -- Druid's Winter Night (1976) -- The Homecoming (1977) -- Changeling Child (1978) -- Bare Ruined Choirs (1979) -- A Shaken World (1980) -- Cross Country Skiing (1981) -- December Morning (1982) -- Opening Day / Hot Stove League / 1983 (1983) -- Stacking Wood (1984) -- Lambertville Lace (1984) -- Invisible Deaths (1985) -- The Poet Considers Moving to Seattle (1985) -- Oranges Were Special (1986) -- Breathing Form (1987) -- The Specific Gravity of Fruitcakes (1988) -- Sled Poem (1989) -- The Cold is no Fiction (1990) -- A Blueprint for Christmas (1991) -- What I Saw out the Window (1992) -- Reaching for the Star (1993) -- The Gifts of a Roadside Magus (1994) -- Looking for Charles Dickens (1995) -- Believing in Snowflakes (1996) -- The Ghost of Christmas Past (1997) -- A Sign (1998) -- Pre-Millennial Snit (1999) -- Trajectory (2000) -- How Silently, How Silently (2001) -- The Gift of Language (2002) -- Trees (2003) -- A Long Path (2003) -- Christmas in June (2004) -- Faded Angel (2004) -- Sunday Morning in Oxford (2005) -- The Illusion of Depth (2005) -- "Christmas Gift," The Ages of Man (2006) -- A Christmas Imperative with Footnotes (2007) -- Old School Christmas (2008) -- Food & Tradition (2009) -- Shagbark Hickory Nuts (2010) -- Ways of Looking at Thirteen Snowmen (2011) -- The Importance of Boxes (2011) -- Christmas Lights (2012) -- Kodak Jelly Roll Pan (2013).

ISBN

• 9780881464658 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0881464651 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2013027501

OCLC

854956921

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library