The Last Decade by Ronald Thomas Rollet
The Last Decade is the culminating masterwork of this celebrated and gifted poet who was Brooklyn's first Poet Laureate. The diversity in subject matter and style is a tribute to Norman Rosten's earned command of the poetic vocabulary. In describing The Last Decade, Norman called the Elegy: For Hedda sequence, the center of the poems. It is the emotional pivot point and contains his wrenching exploration of the intimate bonds that continue to link Norman and his wife, Hedda, after her death. Elegy documents his painful struggle to build a life again. The earthly fabric of their symbiotic relationship is torn apart and yet a new spiritual connection begins to form between them. The Wound stuns the reader in its visceral detailing of the affair between the older poet and his new lover. The knife-edge, carnal hunger exposed in these poems reveals a love that is a composite of all the fervid emotions that came before: sexual desire, jealousy, suspicion, envy, hatred, despair, longing, surrender, loss and the unexpected reunion's desperate lovemaking. Elegy and The Wound and the poems in the section Losses & Silence create powerful narrative tension around grief and erotic love and loss, while the Quixotic sense of humor that informs Biography of Ipsithilla and poems such as Short Poem On the Long View, as well as many in the section City/Cities, represent contrasting and refreshing balancing acts of subject and composition by the poet. Naturally enough for Brooklyn's Poet Laureate, The Last Decade contains many poems celebrating Brooklyn and especially its eponymous bridge. (I take great comfort from the fact that I live around the corner from the most beautiful bridge in the world.) There are also poems that reflect the urbanness of Norman Rosten's spirit-such as Brooklyn Handball Player and Grasshopper In Prospect Park. His well-known love of Mozart and classical music (a theme found in many poems he published in his career and reflected in his opera librettos) is here delightfully recalled in Music On the Brooklyn Barge. Bargemusic, a Brooklyn chamber music performance space that Norman tirelessly promoted, held a special memorial concert featuring selections from the many and varied musical compositions based on his poems.
Norman Rosten, poet, playwright, novelist, was named the first Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, New York. He published seven volumes of poetry, four novels and authored several plays produced on the stage as well as on radio and television. Rosten was a longtime resident of Brooklyn and his writing often reflected his experience of growing up in Coney Island and living in Brooklyn Heights. His poems appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and many other magazines. His play, Mister Johnson, opened on Broadway and in London starring Earl Hyman and later James Earl Jones; Kim Hunter played Emily Dickenson in Rosten's Come Slowly, Eden. The music for his play Mardi Gras was composed by Duke Ellington. Rosten wrote the best-selling non-fiction work, Marilyn: An Untold Story and the libretto for Ezra Lauderman's opera, Marilyn, presented by the NYC Opera. Sidney Lumet directed the screenplay Rosten wrote based on his friend Arthur Miller's play, A View From The Bridge. Rosten received many literary awards, including Yale Series Of Younger Poets, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Poetry Society Of America, Guggenheim Fellowship and Ford Foundation grant. Rosten's wife, Hedda, authored several televised plays, and his daughter, Patricia, edited the children's book, A City Is..., based on his poetry.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780989560979 |
| ISBN 10 | 098956097X |
| Title | The Last Decade |
| Author | Ronald Thomas Rollet |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Seagrove Press |
| Year published | 2017-02-07 |
| Number of pages | 132 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |