Ellen Bryant Voigt
Messenger: New and Selected
Poems 1976-2006
W.
W. Norton & Company About
the Book and Author
This
collection arranges poems from the author’s
six highly praised books alongside a group of astonishing
new pieces.
Ellen Bryant Voigt grew up
in Chatham, Virginia, and has lived in Vermont since
1969. She has published seven volumes of poetry, including
Kyrie, a finalist for the National Book Critics
Circle Award, and Shadow
of Heaven, a finalist for the National Book
Award. In 2002 she received the O.B. Hardison, Jr.
Prize, for poetry and teaching, from the Folger Shakespeare
Library, and the Merrill Fellowship from the Academy
of American Poets, where she was subsequently elected
a chancellor. Voigt designed—and teaches at—the
first low-residency MFA program for writers, at Warren
Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina.
Suggested Links
Academy of American Poets
Ellen Bryant Voigt page
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/880
Publisher's website
http://www.nortonpoets.com/voigte.htm
Excerpt from Messenger: New
and Selected
Poems 1976-2006
From section 4 of “Rubato,” in
Messenger
Deep in Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto,
at the cadenza’s end, the violins
at rest, bows lowered into their laps, and the Maestro
cradling his baton, the two French horns
shaking their spit out onto the floor, the oboe
keeping his reed moist in his mouth—when the
grand
returns, after the solo appassionato,
triplets now set against the bold left hand,
when they pull themselves
again to full attention,
ready to reinstate the common measure,
they first must listen and wait, wait and listen,
all forward movement stalled, while the piano
lists wheresoever she will: tempo rubato:
time taken from one note, given to another.
Excerpted from
Messenger
by Ellen Bryant Voigt. All rights reserved.
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