Allen Grossman
Allen Grossman Poems
When the corpse revived at the funeral,
The outraged mourners killed it; and the soul
Of the revenant passed into the body
...
A great light is the man who knows the woman he loves
A great light is the woman who knows the man she loves
...
Toward evening, the natural light becomes
Intelligent and answers, without demur:
"Be assured! You are not alone. . . ."
...
It happened at midnight.
- What I possessed and lost
or what I never possessed
and have nonetheless lost,
or what in any case I
was not born possessing
but received from another's mouth:
...
Semper dum vivam tui meminero - Erasmus
This is a poem for my old nurse Pat -
Who had something wrong with her heart.
...
I dreamed I sailed alone
In a long boat, a white bone;
Like a strong thought, or a right name
The sail had no seam.
...
Place a man in the center, and he becomes
The man who has prepared for a lifetime
To answer, and now is ready.
...
Upstairs, one floor below the Opera House
on top of the building, was the Caedmon room -
a library of sorts. The Caedmon room
...
O kid! I didn't understand. But now I get it.
Forget their words! Look around for yourself.
At a great distance, we heard something. First
you said, "Do you hear that?" And I DID hear it.
...
The chroniclers ceased, they ceased . . . until I arose -
Out of the infinite unborn, one of the born who lived,
And out of the number of all who have lived and died,
One of those yet alive,
...
It is the duty of every man,
And woman, to write the life of the mother.
But the life of the father is written by
The father alone. - Now he is of great size
...
At that time the sheep called to him
From their wormy bellies, as they
Lay bloating in the field. He was
...
Allen Grossman Biography
Allen Grossman (January 7, 1932 – June 27, 2014) was a noted American poet, critic and professor. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1932, Grossman was educated at Harvard University, graduating with an MA in 1956 after several interruptions. He went on to receive a PhD from Brandeis University in 1960, where he remained a professor until 1991. In 1991, he became the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University where until 2005 he taught in the English Department, primarily focusing on poetry and poetics. He continued to write after his retirement from teaching. Grossman's first marriage ended in divorce; afterwards he married novelist Judith Grossman, and they stayed married until his death. His children are Jonathan Grossman and Adam Grossman from the first marriage, and Bathsheba Grossman, Austin Grossman, and Lev Grossman from the second. On November 11, 2006, on the occasion of his retirement, several friends, colleagues, and students of Grossman held a joint reading in his honor. These included Michael Fried, Susan Howe, Ha Jin, Mark Halliday, Breyten Breytenbach, Susan Stewart and Frank Bidart. The event culminated with a reading by Grossman of poetry from his latest book of poems, Descartes' Loneliness. Grossman died of complications from Alzheimer's at a nursing home in Chelsea, Mass. on June 27, 2014. He was 82.)
The Best Poem Of Allen Grossman
The Piano Player Explains Himself
When the corpse revived at the funeral,
The outraged mourners killed it; and the soul
Of the revenant passed into the body
Of the poet because it had more to say.
He sat down at the piano no one could play
Called Messiah, or The Regulator of the World,
Which had stood for fifty years, to my knowledge,
Beneath a painting of a red-haired woman
In a loose gown with one bared breast, and played
A posthumous work of the composer S—
About the impotence of God (I believe)
Who has no power not to create everything.
It was the Autumn of the year and wet,
When the music started. The musician was
Skilful but the Messiah was out of tune
And bent the time and the tone. For a long hour
The poet played The Regulator of the World
As the spirit prompted, and entered upon
The pathways of His power - while the mourners
Stood with slow blood on their hands
Astonished by the weird processional
And the undertaker figured his bill.
- We have in mind an unplayed instrument
Which stands apart in a memorial air
Where the room darkens toward its inmost wall
And a lady hangs in her autumnal hair
At evening of the November rains; and winds
Sublime out of the North, and North by West,
Are sowing from the death-sack of the seed
The burden of her cloudy hip. Behold,
I send the demon I know to relieve your need,
An imperfect player at the perfect instrument
Who takes in hand The Regulator of the World
To keep the splendor from destroying us.
Lady! The last virtuoso of the composer S—
Darkens your parlor with the music of the Law.
When I was green and blossomed in the Spring
I was mute wood. Now I am dead I sing.
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