Full name: Gabriel: A Poem

Author: Edward Hirsch Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Poetry Purchase/reserch links: Barns&Noble Amazon Goodreads eBooks.com LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780804172875 9780385353571 0804172870 038535357X

Never has there been a book of poems quite like Gabriel, in which a short life, a bewildering death, and the unanswerable sorrow of a father come together in such a sustained elegy. This unabashed sequence speaks directly from Hirsch's heart to our own, without sentimentality. From its opening lines - "The funeral director opened the coffin / And there he was alone / From the waist up" - Hirsch's account is poignantly direct and open to the strange vicissitudes and tricks of grief. In propulsive three-line stanzas, he tells the story of how a once unstoppable child, who suffered from various developmental disorders, turned into an irreverent young adult, funny, rebellious, impulsive. Hirsch mixes his tale of Gabriel with the stories of other poets through the centuries who have also lost children, and expresses his feelings through theirs. His landmark poem enters the broad stream of human grief and raises in us the strange hope, even consolation, that we find in the writer's act of witnessing and transformation. It will be read and reread.   Similar books: A Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch Poet's Choice by Edward Hirsch The Living Fire by Edward Hirsch Special Orders by Edward Hirsch Earthly Measures by Edward Hirsch The Complete Poems by Elizabeth Bishop Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost Crush by Richard Siken Citizen by Claudia Rankine Pillow Thoughts by Courtney Peppernell In My Head by J. M. Storm I Heard God Laughing by Hafiz Devotions by Mary Oliver Thirst by Mary Oliver Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver Counting Descent by Clint Smith Dead Man's Float by Jim Harrison Adam Robison and Other Poems by Adam Robinson Without by Donald Hall Winter Morning Walks by Ted Kooser