Ashes & Stars

By Daniel Hughes, Edward Hirsch and Michael Scrivener

Fifty-five of Daniel Hughes's final poems, containing distinctly insightful and literate meditations on themes of love, art, and hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Release date: Mar 2, 2006
• ISBN: 9780814335819

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ashes & stars

ashes & stars

DANIEL HUGHES

Edited by Mary Hughes

Foreword by Edward Hirsch

Introduction by Michael Scrivener

© 2006 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

10 09 08 07 06                               5 4 3 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hughes, Daniel, 1929-

Ashes & stars / Daniel Hughes; edited by Mary Hughes; foreword by Edward Hirsch; introduction by Michael Scrivener.

p. cm.

Poems.

I. Title: Ashes and stars. II. Hughes, Mary, 1931- III. Title.

PS3558.U35A6 2006

811’.54—dc22

2005031898

∞

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of English at Wayne State University for their generous support of the publication of this volume.

Designed by Elizabeth Pilon

Typeset by Maya Rhodes

Composed in 12/16 Berkeley Oldstyle Book

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Michael Scrivener

I

I Whip Around

If We Let Go, Of Course Death Has Us

Back

Icarus

At Last

Please

The Book Fell from His Hand

Take the Big Subject: Exile

Travel

Torn, Filthy Maps

Narcissus (Caravaggio)

I Have Lived

Nature

Frond

I Have Been Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

Even

Not Seeing Vermeer

II

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

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

Mother from Beyond the Grave

Soft

Next Time

Self-Wounding

Obituaries

Steve: The Silences

Anywhere Out of the World

III

To Mary 5:00 A.M.

Hurt

Glimpse

Best Choices

O I Like

You Feed Me

The Steady-On Agnostic Needs a Muse

Epipsychidion Again (To Karen)

To K——

Let It Out (To E.W)

Your Dead Lovers

Easter

The Divine Sparks Trapped in the World

Were I

It’s All

IV

Saint Mary’s Schoolyard

Lament of Goliath

My Brutal Face Has Lasted Four Hundred Years

Painting Destroyed: Caravaggio

Berlioz Killed an Opera in His Head

Down

To a