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Gerald Stern

Gerald Stern

Gerald Stern is the author of 15 books of poetry, including, most recently, Save the Last Dance (Norton, 2008), as well as This Time: New and Selected Poems (Norton), which won the 1998 National Book Award. stern Early Collected: Poems from 1965-1992 was published by W.W. Norton in the spring of 2010. Stern's memoir from Trinity University Press called Stealing History was published in early 2012, along with a new book of poems from W. W. Norton, In Beauty Bright.

Ecstasy

The reason broken glass wouldn't do
it was stolen from a Norwegian novel of the same name,
the movie by that name starred Hedy Lamarr,
the most beautiful woman in Europe
running naked through a forest in Bavaria.

It's to be repossessed, a strange word
that has to do with Toyotas and Chevys.
It's at least a kind of dislocation
or, as Ira says, a boundless absorption of the world.

I see it as an abandonment of self, as if the white horse
who dove 60 feet into the ring of fire did it
of his own accord and the rider with her spurs
was merely sitting there and thinking how the water in that tank
would not flow into the holes of her face this time
for seven was not enough, even 70 wouldn't be.

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