The Golden Coin
Alan Feldman
Wisconsin Poetry Series
Ronald Wallace, Series Editor
The pleasures of daydreaming, the discoveries of travel, and the appreciation of a pencil
What is good fortune? The Golden Coin asks—and answers—this question in poems about youth, conflict, travel, family love, and the joys and fears of getting old. Aboard his sailboat, Feldman draws lessons from the sea about time and history. His gaze tempered not by nostalgia or longing but by satisfaction and happiness, he finds wry joy in the Havana airport's sniffer dog napping near the impounded luggage. In acknowledging the inevitability of change, he reports from the battle zones of an essentially lucky life, with only as much sadness and terror as ordinary life inevitably requires.
Alan Feldman is a poet whose many books and chapbooks include A Sail to Great Island and Immortality, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. He is professor emeritus of English at Framingham State University in Massachusetts.
http://alanfeldmanpoetry.com
Praise
“A poet whose emotional resources are immense. From book to book, Alan Feldman continues to widen and deepen his poetic reach until even the stars are drawn down to his writing table.”
—Bill Zavatsky, author of Where X Marks the Spot
“Any humanist's hero, Alan Feldman writes poems that distill from honest observation and a generous, discerning heart. The only thing that mitigates the regret of leaving the self-deprecating confidence and expansive vision of these poems is the instructive memory of their sensibility.”
—Jessica Greenbaum, author of The Two Yvonnes
“These vivid, occasionally hilarious, exquisitely crafted poems never lapse into despair, but cradle us with their wisdom and energy. Feldman takes us into the complexities of memory, to countries beyond the United States, and, over and over, out into the sparkling sea.”
—Wendy Barker, author of One Blackbird at a Time
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Larger images
March 2018
LC: 2017042901 PS
104 pp. 6 x 9
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