Selected Poems

By Celestine Frost

Subjects: Poetry, Literature
Imprint: Distribution Partners
Paperback : 9781930337718, 230 pages, March 2013

Table of contents

An Inhuman Rival
Third Shot
I was afraid
from Leucopoesia
Mountains Rising in the Distance
Drama, Aug. 4th, 5 a. m.
A Thin Wraith
and the word is Justice”
The Rich Arabian
As the Locust
Small Triumph
Crossing the Desert by Day
August 28, 1973
In the Inner Sanctum
By Contrast
“marriage of two deaths”
Out of This World
The Listener
The Choice
A poem in 5 parts

An Imagined Experience over the Entrance

Oikonde (with 5 parts)
The Great Dream Tree
Regeneration
He (2 parts)
Annunciation
The Window
The Cat Skinners
The Responsible Being
As Bees Breed
Birth
Name
Then Fabled Wilderness
Mid-Wife
As a Drug That Brings Great Relief
The Morning of Death
The World’s House
Living in the Open
My Creek
The Landing
The Gates
The Answer
The Wits
Resignation on Rt. 3
Four States
The Dog Was in the Sky
I Wanted, Then, to Tell You
November
The Rose
Autobiography
He
A One Way Killer (3 parts)
The Archer
First Light
Mother Fear
The Thirteenth Brother
The Refugees (A Dialogue)
I Gathered my Ear from the Green Field
“I gathered my ear from the green field”
“I call for someone tough”
“The line of advance &”
… as the grass upon the housetops”
i. e.
But listen____”
O God, we need you,”
The Rat Knows
I thot it wd be well”
How we can make it do:”
We saw a bird alight”
Call me as one,”
[spider with music]
Pretense, rage and shame___”
Beyond help”
The Silent Call (6 parts)
how
I tried to say “clown;”
Thus
That thin man”
Words”
(The eyes do not see objectively)”
FEVer
At dawn she compelled us to turn”
We all have someone to whom we express our . ..”
We’ve been pursuing a subject”
Our summer”
Kalkaino
Xáox (a bottle of chaos, please. )
The Wildflower
!
The Fancy Little Cur
But we stressed living day by day”
but it ain’t day,”
Beauty is out of Style
. . . a lion,”
Her thought casts her tendings”
Your Page
Peaceful Rabbit with a question mark”
Sweet day so cool,”
& I Wrote

A Yelp in the Ideal
Song
The Universe Worm (in 2 parts)
Dawn
A Thin Peel of Moon
Night Fishing
Considering
The Feast
The Island Rabbi
G-d’s Law
Revelation
Epic
Standstill
We Were Going to March
Beauty, Beauty
In That Day
Doggerel
Surrender
Black
Life
And for the Homeless
The Valiant
Queen
For Joy
The Song
Voice of Angel
The Tree
The Book
The C Monster In Spring
Truce
But Now
Epitaph
Day Clean
Ah!
Poem In Five Verses

Uncollected Poems
We Leap from a Trap
“Hail, Mary!”
Our little boat?”

In these idiosyncratic, subtly rhymed and occasionally violent lyrics, Frost runs her tongue along the edge of the knife dividing wit from rage.

Description

This book includes poems culled from Frost's five published volumes, An Inhuman Rival, The Choice, An Imagined Experience over the Entrance, I Gathered My Ear from the Green Field, and A Yelp in the Ideal, as well as some uncollected work.

Celestine Frost was born in 1935 and grew up on an island in South Carolina. In the 1970s and '80s she gave frequent public readings in small noisy bars. Though she has lived in Manhattan for most of her adult life, she has never failed to spend the two hottest months of the year at her home on James Island.

Reviews

Praise for Celestine Frost

"This is feisty, apt writing with an appetite one very much respects. No world is ever there unless it's come into. Here's a way in!" — Robert Creeley

"Celestine Frost's poems have the delicate touch that the surest poets command. Here is music that can devise with fire and grace. " — Ed Foster, editor, Talisman

"A brilliant song, a celebration of life connecting us to the universe. Frost experiments with language and form, creating a unique rhythm and vision—playful, profound. " — Marcia Arrieta, editor, Indefinite Space