Spending the Winter: A Poetry Collection

By Joseph Bottum

The poetry of Spending the Winter is musical and structured, whimsical and piercing, begging to be read aloud when one is not laughing or arrested by an image that hooks the heart. “Poems so severely beautiful that they become unforgettable after one reading,” writes one poet. “A throwback to a time when lovers of poetry…looked for poetry of depth, wit, and craft from the likes of Auden and Larkin,” adds another. With sections of comedy that show his wit, translations that echo his vast reading, and formalist poetry that reveal his craft, Bottum aims, in the way few poets these days do, at memorable lines and heart-stopping images as he seeks the deep stuff of human experience: God and birth and death—the beautiful and terrifying finitude of life. “We do with words what little words can do,” he writes. But in Spending the Winter, Joseph Bottum shows that words can do far more than a little.

“Poems so severely beautiful that they become unforgettable after one reading. . . . If you’re a reader who loves poetry whatever mood it’s in, just open Spending the Winter anywhere to find poems that hurt, enlighten, and delight.” —Rhina P. Espaillat, author of Rehearsing Absence and winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize

“Joseph Bottum is a brilliant formalist, and to read him is to enter the world of the tried-and-true classics, all achieved with an amazingly contemporary ring. His Spending the Winter is a delight. Here is a poetry of elegy, humor, wit, political savvy, and vast learning.” —Paul Mariani, author The Great Wheel and winner of the John Ciardi Award

“Joseph Bottum’s Spending the Winter is a throwback to a time when lovers of poetry outside the literary establishment looked for poetry of depth, wit, and craft from the likes of Auden and Larkin. This is poetry from another age—an age when we expected intellectual, religious, and literary significance from our verse.” —A.M. Juster, author of Wonder and Wrath and winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize

“Spending the Winter is a word-lover’s dream: Joseph Bottum’s poems pierce, probe, dazzle, and delight. They will open the eyes of your soul.” —Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well

“When reading Spending the Winter, I recalled C.S. Lewis’s description of joy as a wanting for something that is beyond this world. There’s a sense in these poems that things around us are fleeting, yet for that reason, the poems ask us to pay all the more attention.” —Jessica Hooten Wilson, author of Giving the Devil his Due

• Language: English
• Publisher: St. Augustines Press
• Release date: Sep 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781587318160

Book preview

Other Books of Interest from St. Augustine’s Press

Joseph Bottum, The Decline of the Novel

Joseph Bottum, The Second Spring

Joseph Bottum, The Fall and Other Poems

Numa Fustel de Coulanges, (Faith Bottum, translator) The Ancient City

Jeremy Black, The Importance of Being Poirot

Jeremy Black, In Fielding’s Wake

Marvin R. O’Connell, Telling Stories that Matter: Memoirs and Essays

Rollin A. Lasseter, The Cast of Valor

Ralph McInerny, Shakespearean Variation

Ralph McInerny, The Soul of Wit: Some Poems

Anne Drury Hall, Where the Muses Still Haunt: The Second Reading

David Lowenthal, Slave State: Rereading Orwell’s 1984

Gene Fendt, Camus’ Plague: Myth for Our World

John Poch, God’s Poems: The Beauty of Poetry and the Christian Imagination

Roger Scruton, The Politics of Culture and Other Essays

Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism: Revised 3rd Edition

Roger Scruton, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture

Allen Menenhall, Shouting Softly: Lines on Law, Literature, and Culture

Gabriel Marcel, The Invisible Threshold: Two Plays by Gabriel Marcel

Will Morrisey, Shakespeare’s Politic Comedy

Will Morrissey, Herman Melville’s Ship of State

Winston Churchill, The River War

Spending the Winter

JOSEPH BOTTUM

ST. AUGUSTINE’S PRESS

South Bend, Indiana

Copyright © 2022 by Joseph Bottum

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of St. Augustine’s Press.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939585

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-58731-815-3

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-58731-816-0

∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

St. Augustine’s Press

www.staugustine.net

For Heather Hyde

Table of Contents

I: The Morning Watch

Easter Morning

What Falls Was Green

Still Life

Bliss and Blunder

The Hidden Life

Ascetic’s Prayer

Tardy

The Morning Watch

II: Imitations

Floret Silva Nobilis

Doves

O Portuguese

Choriambs and Trisyllabics: Four Englishings of Neo-Latin Hexameter

1. Seven Years Away from Paris

2. A London Frost Fair

3. The Transit of Venus

4. Epitaph for a Dog

Saro’s Love Song

Some Souls

III: Trifles

Going Steady

An Adulterer’s Introspection

The Logician’s Lament

Reading by Osmosis

My Last Dutch Oven

IV: Occasionals

Four Seasons: A Graduation Poem

1. Winter

2. Spring

3. Summer

4. Autumn

Some Come to See the Lord: A Christmas Carol

The Wind Unschooled: Two Verses for My Godchildren

1. Yes, I Guess

2. My