# Collected Poems - Paperback

by **Ellen Bryant Voigt** (Author)

In eight extraordinary volumes spanning five decades, Ellen Bryant Voigt has created a body of work distinguished by its formal precision, rigorous intelligence, and meticulous observation of nature, history, and domestic life. From the subtly evocative images of _Claiming Kin_ (1976) to the mosaic of sonnets and voices conjuring a prescient narrative of the 1918 influenza pandemic in _Kyrie_ (1995) to fierce encounters with mortality in the National Book Award finalist _Shadow of Heaven_ (2002) and the propulsive inventions of _Headwaters_ (2013), the evolution of Voigt's astonishing creative and technical mastery is on full display. This definitive collection showcases the brilliant career of "a quintessential American elegist" (Katy Didden, _Kenyon Review_).

From "Apple Tree"  
  
_O my soul,  
it is not a small thing,  
to have made from three,  
this one, this one life._  

### Back Jacket

**Praise for Ellen Bryant Voigt**

"Reading Voigt one comes to understand that what we think of as reality is the product of both painstaking observation and imagination.... She favors a language that is both precise and lush, and a narrative that is both immediately accessible and richly layered with meaning."  
**\-- Charles Simic, _New York Review of Books_**

"Voigt has a highly tempered poetic intelligence, most obvious in her line by line determination to align evocative images with their emotional incentives."  
**\-- Sven Birkerts, _New York Times Book Review_**

"\[Voigt is a\] genius. She is a poet of knowledge, and knowledge in the living, messy world."  
**\-- Robert Pinsky, _Washington Post Book World_**

"Ellen Bryant Voigt has fashioned an art of passionate gravity and opulent music, an art at once ravishing and stern and deeply human."  
**\-- Academy Award in Literature citation, American Academy of Arts and Letters**

"The beauty and intensity of Ellen Bryant Voigt's sustained elegy leaves us feeling much as we do after listening to Mozart's _Requiem_: grief-stricken, transformed, and exalted."  
**\-- Francine Prose**

"Voigt's poems are shorn of superfluity, each line shaved down to its essential, burning core. She is a poet of control and precision; across decades and amid differing poetical movements, Voigt is steadfast in her adherence to a clear-eyed iambic elegy--an elegy defined most strikingly by her devotion to unsentimental self-interrogation and her equally unflinching assessments of public life."  
**\-- Martin Mitchell, _Poetry Daily_**

**Number of Pages:** 496

**Dimensions:** 0.87 x 9.14 x 6.12 IN

**Publication Date:** July 30, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 17.99 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 17.99 USD | In stock |

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- Collected Poems - Paperback

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