Memoir of the Hawk: Poems
by James Tate
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Memoir of the Hawk creates a world populated by hundreds of characters, believable and strange, tugged at the edges by the unexpected. In the privacy of their homes, who can save them from themselves? In the forests and hills and on the beautiful lakes, what could possibly be wrong? Even in the sweet hometown, with its kindly police, menace lurks in a thousand disguises. Mystery and magic surround this metropolis of the imagination. Once again, James Tate has given us a world of surprising show more pleasures: ... lost in the interstellar space between teacups in the cupboard, found in the beak of a downy woodpecker, the lovers staring into the void and then jumping over it, flying into their beautiful tomorrows like the heroes of a storm. show lessTags
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ThingScore 75
To write a poem out of nothing at all is Tate's genius. For him, the poem is something one did not know was there until it was written down. Image evokes image, as rhyme evokes rhyme in formal prosody, until there is a poem. The poet is like a fortuneteller with a mirror and a dictionary. He's trying to make sense and give identities to what at first appears to be the product of wild show more imaginings. With all his reliance on chance, Tate has a serious purpose. He's searching for a new way to write a lyric poem. show less
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Author Information
37+ Works 1,594 Members
James Vincent Tate was born in Kansas City on December 8, 1943 and erupted upon the poetry scene when, in 1967, at the age of 23, he received the Yale Series of Young Poets award for The Lost Pilot. Within two years of his stunning debut, Tate had another dozen collections in print or accepted for publication. Tate's work earned him the Pulitzer show more Prize and the National Book Award. He was a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dudley Fitts selected Tate's first book of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967), for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the Writers' Workshop; Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." Tate's first volume of poetry, Cages, was published by Shepherd's Press, Iowa City, 1966. Tate won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award in 1991 for his Selected Poems. In 1994, he won the National Book Award for his poetry collection Worshipful Company of Fletchers. In addition to many books of poetry, he published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999). Tate received his B.A. in 1965, going on to earn his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa's famed Writer's Workshop. He died on July 8, 2015 at the age of 71. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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