Joseph Stroud
Joseph Stroud Poems
Take a plane to London.
From King's Cross take the direct train to York.
Rent a car and drive across the vale to Ripon,
then into the dales toward the valley of the Nidd,
...
Everywhere, everywhere, snow sifting down,
a world becoming white, no more sounds,
no longer possible to find the heart of the day,
the sun is gone, the sky is nowhere, and of all
...
Bitter the warmth of sunlight, and bitter the taste of apple,
the song and the stars and wheat fields, bitter the memory,
moonlight, the shine of the lake's surface in morning
...
I, too, remember the past, my room lit by candles,
and the night she entered and touched my face
with her face, with mouth and tongue and lips,
...
From a pyre on the burning ghat
a corpse slowly sits up in the flames.
As if remembering something important.
...
The yellow jacket keeps crashing against the pane
trying to get out. All along it's only a matter
of opening the window, finding the words,
...
The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light's great
...
Joseph Stroud Biography
Joseph Stroud, (born 1943, Glendale, California) is an American poet. He was educated at the University of San Francisco, California State University at Los Angeles, and San Francisco State University. He is currently retired from teaching at Cabrillo College. He has published five collections of poetry, most recently Of This World; New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) and Country of Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2004). His work earned a Pushcart Prize in 2000 and has been featured on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. He was also a finalist for the Northern California Book Critics Award in 2005 and a year later was selected for a Witter Bynner Fellowship in poetry from the Library of Congress. Varied in subject and form, Stroud’s poems include six-line lyrics, narrative prose poems, odes, homages, sustained contemplations, suites, and brief epigrammatic offerings. However it is substance, whatever form it takes, that interests him. His poetry articulates a voyage through places and times and voices, often sifting through the details of daily life, searching for miracles (“Inside the pear there’s a paradise we will never know, our only hint the sweetness of its taste.” - Comice, Below Cold Mountain). He divides his time between his home in Santa Cruz, California, and a cabin in the Sierra Nevada.)
The Best Poem Of Joseph Stroud
Directions
Take a plane to London.
From King's Cross take the direct train to York.
Rent a car and drive across the vale to Ripon,
then into the dales toward the valley of the Nidd,
a narrow road with high stone walls on each side,
and soon you'll be on the moors. There's a pub,
The Drovers, where it's warm inside, a tiny room,
you can stand at the counter and dink a pint of Old Peculiar.
For a moment everything will be all right. You're back
at a beginning. Soon you'll walk into Yorkshire country,
into dells, farms, into blackberry and cloud country,
back into your life. This is true. You can do this.
Even now, sitting at your desk, worrying, troubled,
you can gaze across Middlesmoor to Ramsgill,
the copses, the abbeys of slanting light, the fells,
you can look down on that figure walking toward Scar House,
cheeks flushed, curlews rising in front of him, walking,
making his way, working his life, step by step into grace.
Joseph Stroud Comments
I recently read Auvergne and I had received comice as a Christmas present from a client, and I found in this poem, Auvergne, a whole world put in an order that compels me to read and read again. And, thus, I have ordered Mr. Stroud's books of poetry.
Joseph Stroud Popularity
Joseph Stroud Popularity
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4/25/2024 7:39:44 PM # 1.0.0.1119
Directions. I heard this on Writers Almanac.7 years ago. I live 45 mins from the Vale of the Nidd, Nidderdale. When my wife died,4 years ago, I believed - I can do this - this is true. And I went out walking, making my way, working my life, step by step, into grace.. A great poem..