Access provided by Stanford University []
Browse Book and Journal Content on Project MUSE
OR
Browse >
title

Ashes & Stars

Daniel Hughes Edited by Mary Hughes Foreword by Edward Hirsch Introduction by Michael Scrivener

Publication Year: 2006

Daniel Hughes's final volume of poetry, written during his years of struggle with multiple sclerosis, displays his characteristic wit, intelligence, and imagination. While the poems in Ashes & Stars deal with themes such as love and mortality, the conflict between imagination and actuality, and the pleasures of the world around us, they are never somber or overly serious. Even the shortest ones have a wry comic sense. Additionally, Hughes's poems demonstrate a remarkably economical and precise use of language, without a wasted word in the entire collection. Although the concentrated emotion of the poems may remind readers of Emily Dickinson and Robert Lowell, Hughes's poetic forms-quatrains, tercets, irregular sonnets, irregular rhymes-also illustrate the deep influence of the English Romantics, whom he championed throughout his academic career. In addition, many poems draw inspiration from numerous individuals and works of art from the Italian Renaissance, as they weave abstract themes from Western culture with the sensual data of the poet's experience. Despite these deep historical and literary roots, the conversational tone of Ashes & Stars ensures that it is never dry or academic. The poems speak to the reader as to an intimate, giving a sense of transmitting hard-earned experience and knowledge. All readers will appreciate the passionate energy and worldly air of these unique and exactingly honest final poems.

Published by: Wayne State University Press

Cover

pdf iconDownload PDF (656.6 KB)
 

Title Page, Copyright

pdf iconDownload PDF (426.1 KB)
 

Contents

pdf iconDownload PDF (422.8 KB)
pp. v-vii

read more

Foreword

pdf iconDownload PDF (415.6 KB)
pp. ix-xii

The poet Daniel Hughes, a radiant presence, left behind an enormous hole when he died in October 2003, at the age of seventy-four. He lived the majority of his adult life in Detroit, where for twenty-four years...

read more

Introduction

pdf iconDownload PDF (422.3 KB)
pp. xiii-xviii

When I saw Dan Hughes at Providence Hospital that Sunday in early October 2003, he was eating chocolates, reading the Sunday New York Times, and making wisecracks about George Bush. I did not expect him...

part I

pdf iconDownload PDF (485.8 KB)
pp. 1-19

I Whip Around

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 3-

If We Let Go, Of Course Death Has Us

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.8 KB)
pp. 4-

Icarus

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.8 KB)
pp. 6-

At Last

pdf iconDownload PDF (409.0 KB)
pp. 7-

Please

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 8-

“The Book Fell from His Hand”

pdf iconDownload PDF (409.0 KB)
pp. 9-

Take the Big Subject: Exile

pdf iconDownload PDF (402.0 KB)
pp. 10-

Travel

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.8 KB)
pp. 11-

Torn, Filthy Maps

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.8 KB)
pp. 12-

Narcissus (Caravaggio)

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.8 KB)
pp. 13-

I Have Lived

pdf iconDownload PDF (409.0 KB)
pp. 14-

Nature

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 15-

Frond

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 16-

I Have Been Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

pdf iconDownload PDF (402.0 KB)
pp. 17-

Not Seeing Vermeer

pdf iconDownload PDF (420.1 KB)
pp. 19-

part II

pdf iconDownload PDF (485.8 KB)
pp. 21-34

To Charles Harte, Not Alive When Heaney Won the Nobel Prize

pdf iconDownload PDF (409.2 KB)
pp. 23-

Why Didn’t You Tell Me You Were the Great Poet’s Muse?

pdf iconDownload PDF (402.9 KB)
pp. 24-25

Mother from Beyond the Grave

pdf iconDownload PDF (408.9 KB)
pp. 26-

Next Time

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.6 KB)
pp. 28-

Self-Wounding

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.8 KB)
pp. 29-

Obituaries

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.9 KB)
pp. 30-

Steve: The Silences

pdf iconDownload PDF (412.0 KB)
pp. 31-33

Anywhere Out of the World

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 34-

part III

pdf iconDownload PDF (485.8 KB)
pp. 35-51

To Mary 5:00 A.M.

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 37-

Glimpse

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 39-

Best Choices

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 40-

O I Like

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 41-

You Feed Me

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 42-

The Steady-On Agnostic Needs a Muse

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 43-

Epipsychidion Again

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.9 KB)
pp. 44-

To K——

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 45-

Let It Out

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.9 KB)
pp. 46-

Your Dead Lovers

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.9 KB)
pp. 47-

Easter 1996

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.9 KB)
pp. 48-

The Divine Sparks Trapped in the World

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 49-

Were I

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.7 KB)
pp. 50-

It’s All

pdf iconDownload PDF (420.0 KB)
pp. 51-

part IV

pdf iconDownload PDF (485.8 KB)
pp. 53-68

Saint Mary’s Schoolyard

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.8 KB)
pp. 55-

Lament of Goliath

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.9 KB)
pp. 56-

My Brutal Face Has Lasted Four Hundred Years

pdf iconDownload PDF (409.2 KB)
pp. 57-

Painting Destroyed:Caravaggio

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.9 KB)
pp. 58-

Berlioz Killed an Opera in His Head

pdf iconDownload PDF (409.1 KB)
pp. 59-

To a Poet

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.8 KB)
pp. 61-

The Fate of Books

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.8 KB)
pp. 62-

Reading a Writer Recently Dead

pdf iconDownload PDF (402.0 KB)
pp. 64-

Not for Poets

pdf iconDownload PDF (408.9 KB)
pp. 65-

After All

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.6 KB)
pp. 66-

My Poem Making Its Way in the World

pdf iconDownload PDF (401.9 KB)
pp. 67-

Here Come the Notes to My Poems

pdf iconDownload PDF (804.1 KB)
pp. 68-


E-ISBN-13: 9780814335819
Print-ISBN-13: 9780814333099

Page Count: 86
Publication Year: 2006

Series Title: Non-series

Recommend

UPCC logo
  • You have access to this content
  • Free sample
  • Open Access
  • Restricted Access

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the Search box at the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the results page. Use the Browse box to browse a selection of books and journals.

Connect with Project MUSE

Project MUSE | 2715 North Charles Street | Baltimore, Maryland USA 21218 | (410) 516-6989 | About | Contact | Help | Tools | Order

©2013 Project MUSE. Produced by The Johns Hopkins University Press in collaboration with The Milton S. Eisenhower Library.