The Age of Reasons: Uncollected Poems 1969–1982

By Ted Greenwald

This collection of Ted Greenwald's poetry, edited by Miles Champion, is a sampler of some of Greenwald's most breathtaking work. A New York poet with close ties to the New York School and the Language poets, Greenwald has written daily since the early 1960s, and none of the poems in this book are included in any of his books to date. These discrete works were written in advance of or alongside the extended explorations of a mutated triolet form that increasingly occupied him from the late 1970s on. This book can be seen as a companion to Common Sense, and provides further evidence of Greenwald's ability to think with his ear, to hear what's said as it arrives as a fresh sound or shape in his head. This work is singular in its pattern-making, its music-making, and its ability to simultaneously follow multiple paths. An online reader's companion will be available at tedgreenwald.site.wesleyan.edu

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Release date: Apr 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9780819576279

Ted Greenwald

Ted Greenwald (1959-2016) had published extensively for over fifty years. He was the author of over thirty books, including Common Sense, Age of Reasons, Licorice Chronicles, Word of Mouth, Jumping the Line, In Your Dreams, 3 and Clearview/LIE. Greenwald's work had been featured in the PennSound Series, the Segue Reading Series at the Bowery Poetry Club and Public Access Poetry. Heralded as an innovator in the world of poetry, Greenwald was a trailblazer for modern poets everywhere through his creation of Language poetry, inviting the reader to find meaning instead of the poet providing one.

Book preview

man

who write

one

million poems

in

one

day

maybe

know what’s up

I light

cigaret

rain smoke

SHOW AND TELL

When I first saw you

I liked you    You

didn’t come on the way

you thought you came on

My first impression of you was

you’re a person

who I’m really glad to know

who’s interested

in intellectual thoughts and true meanings of things

and I figured

since I was so glad to really get to know you

you’d be pretty glad to get to know me

and maybe I would touch your face with my hands

like I’m in the process of doing now

and look at you at arm’s distance

and then closer in

when and if it’s ok with you

and we could walk out of this room

arm-in-arm or shoulder-to-shoulder

just touching every other step or so

and go get a coke

or a pepsi and some grilled cheese

I really’d like a cheeseburger more

and talk about books and movies

and just exchange

if you’d want to do that with me

intellectual thoughts

and true meanings    Just

about ourselves     We would be able

to share and explore

all the little thoughts and feelings

that really can mess up the day

if things don’t go right

and all the quote irritations of modern living unquote

that Chekhov discussed so well

and then maybe we could learn to be friends

in this process of discovering

what makes each other tick

Pass me a