Collected Poems of Kay Boyle

Kay Boyle

From Paris in the 1920s to the student strikes at San Francisco State in the 1960s, Kay Boyle chronicled much of the twentieth century. This collection includes all her published poetry as well as new work, which ranges from the intensely personal to the outspokenly political.

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ISBN: 9781556590399

Format: Paperback

Ode to a Maintenance Man and His Family

Renato O. Jones, you maintain my beliefs
And service my thoughts when they cease to function.
You repair the ailing equipage of the present, transform
The past into flowers around the shuffle-board court
Where there were none before. You speak
The melodious languages of countries that bask
In the sun, employ vacuum respirator as though
It were rod or staff from the garden of Paradise.

You anoint windowpanes with Windex and kneel
In concern for stains on the carpeting,
as men knelt in ancient cathedrals where their voices
Murmured in prayer. You restore me with dance-steps
From harbors you knew: Shanghai, Marseilles, Trinidad,
And how many others. The songs that you sing
(As you unclog drains or retrieve lights when bulbs
Flicker and fail, or weave copper patches into the webs
Of damaged screen doors) are magical with the music
Of names of your family: Carmelita, Christopher, Dissere,
Alex and Mark, and Kevin and Kenneth and Kerwin.

Each day you say to me – not in words but in the eloquence
Of your presence – that infinite patience with mankind is everything.

(Aug.–Sept. 1990)

About the Author

Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1902, and began her writing life in Paris during the 1920s, publishing in the expatriate magazine transition, and becoming friends with Djuna Barnes, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, and other writers and artists. From 1923 to 1941 she lived in Austria, England, and France, and from 1946 to 1953 she was a foreign correspondent for The New Yorker. She has published two dozen books of fiction, as well as a memoir of …

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Reviews

“The poems of this American fiction writer and journalist, who kept company with Samuel Beckett, Djuna Barnes, and James Joyce in 1920s Paris, are uninhibited and passionate.” —Library Journal

“Some poetry seems written on the waters, some carved into stone. Kay Boyle’s fits the second category. There is something so unmovable, so crystalline about her lines that they seem sculpted rather than written… [Collected Poems of Kay Boyle] will give lovers of classic beauty many thrilling moments.” —Booklist

“[Boyle’s] untiring involvement with world politics and leading literary and art figures, as well as her fervent belief in communicating her own convictions reverberate here. The poems muscle their way in unapologetically to comment, to celebrate… [Collected Poems of Kay Boyle] is an important document, not only of a public and private writer, but of our 20th century.” —The Antioch Review

“A ‘feminist’ long before anyone used the word, Boyle writes poems that are lyrical and socially engaged, and that locate the political within the personal, the imaginative act within historical context.” —BookPeople

“This collection should not merely supplement the record of Boyle’s past accomplishments, but stimulate a renewal of interest in Boyle the poet… It is an important book.” —Calyx

“[Boyle’s poems] astound with sheer bulk and lack of apology as they address social and political topics in a refreshingly forthright way.” —Library Journal

“[Boyle’s] poetry, like her prose, locates the political within the personal, the imaginative act within a historical context.” —New American Writing

“[Kay Boyle’s] poems are full of color and vibrancy of life, the work of a master of language.”—John Logan

“Showcasing a poetic career spanning 65 years, this fine volume demonstrates the strength of Boyle’s… commitment to a political aesthetic, one that combines a wealth of nuanced knowledge with a genuine, liberal spirit.” —Publisher’s Weekly

“Kay Boyle represents a persistent and powerful cosmopolitan voice in American letters, where the political and personal merge into the necessity of the moral… Whatever you do, [do] not overlook her works.” —The Reader’s Review

“The Collected Poems of Kay Boyle will give any reader a kaleidoscopic glimpse of one poet’s views of the social events that have shaped much of this decade [sic], but also insight into the personal and private life of Kay Boyle… a master of language.” —Weber Studies