Night Mowing

by Chard deNiord

The poems in Night Mowing find their influence in the natural and the erotic; the biblical and the classical; the aesthetic and the spiritual. The landscape exists as both an ecstatic source of inspiration and as an endangered garden, and the narrator of these poems moves through that landscape in admiration and anguish: trying to preserve his joyful innocence while fully aware of the transience of all that he sees. Each poem in its specifics, whether...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822958945
• ISBN13: 9780822958949
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

inner life reflected in changing weather of Adirondacks

In the eight-page poem "Sleeping Lessons," "Adirondack chairs lay fractured on/the lawn, dismantled by the storm." The poet knows of the destructive, uncompromisng power of storms. Yet a few lines later in this same poem, this "weatherman at heart...imagine[s] and therefore remember[s] perfect forms." In "Sugaring," he realizes "the world was one behind the guise of leaves." No matter what may come into the poet's life, he always, by a combination of instinct, belief, and willfulness, searches for unity at least; and often, better, the heartening, heady feeling of redemption and transcendence.

Speaking to both minute and profound subjects, and the resonance of memory long after the event has

Night Mowing is a collection of free-verse poetry by Associate Professor of English Chard DeNiord. Many poems feature a wistful first-person narrative tone. Speaking to both minute and profound subjects, and the resonance of memory long after the event has passed, Night Mowing evokes lengthy contemplation from brief inspiration. I Get Up When I'm Dead: The earth is more beautiful / to me now than when I was alive. / I am wise at last, laughing / at my grave, confusing my dates. / These clothes I wear were laundered / by the sky, pressed by earth. / I'm different now but still here, / smoking a cigarette that won't go out, / writing nothing down, finding everything / I lost but no longer need. / I'm never tired or hungry anymore, / although I continue to sleep in order to dream / and eat to taste the salt I craved. / Nothing has changed. / My heart has stopped, stilling my blood, / settling my thoughts. / I am still alive, slipping down / the street like the shadow of a cloud.