Solving for X: Poems
4/5
()
About this ebook
In Solving for X, his award-winning collection of new poems, Robert B. Shaw probes the familiar and encounters the unexpected; in the apparently random he discerns a hidden order. Throughout, Shaw ponders the human frailties and strengths that continue to characterize us, with glances at the stresses of these millennial times that now test our mettle and jar our complacency. Often touched with humor, his perceptions are grounded in devoted observation of the changing world.
As in his previous collections, Shaw in these poems unites conversational vigor with finely crafted metrical lines. Final judge Rachel Hadas says it best: “Solving for X is droll and puzzled, elegiac and satirical in equal measure. Shaw’s attention alights on a variety of more and less tangible things—a seed catalog, a shirt, a bad book, a request for a letter of recommendation, an irritating colleagues’s death—which his masterfully packed lines then proceed to light up with deliberate and unforgettable authority.”
Robert B. Shaw
Robert B. Shaw is a professor of English at Mount Holyoke College. He writes frequently on modern and contemporary poetry. His own books of poems include Below the Surface and Solving for X (winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize).
Read more from Robert B. Shaw
Grasses of Colorado Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistory of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistory of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Solving for X
Related ebooks
Russia’s Uncommon Prophet: Father Aleksandr Men and His Times Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMary for Today Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5New and Collected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHotly in Pursuit of the Real: Notes Toward a Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Work: In Retrospect Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Farewell Discourses: Meditations on John 13-17 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMan on Mission - Life of St. Francis Xavier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsR. S. Thomas: A Stylistic Biography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings'C' Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Still Pilgrim: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cathedral Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCry of the Heart: On the Meaning of Suffering Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Life of Christ Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPraying in Time: The Hours & Days in Step with Orthodox Christian Tradition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Symposium (SparkNotes Philosophy Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGift to the Church and World: Fifty Years of Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Birth of the Church: Meditations on John 18-21 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIntroducing Moriarty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYOUCAT English: Youth Prayer Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reimagining the Analogia Entis: The Future of Erich Przywara's Christian Vision Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsB (After Dante) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo Sisters in the Spirit: Therese of Lisieux and Elizabeth of the Trinity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5He Gave Us So Much: A Tribute to Benedict XVI Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Fresh Look at the Mass: A Helpful Guide to Better Understand and Celebrate the Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJourney to God Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Is the Day That the Lord Has Made: The Liturgical Year in Orthodoxy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taken In Faith: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe World of Prayer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
General Fiction For You
Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Candy House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recital of the Dark Verses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Second Life of Mirielle West: A Haunting Historical Novel Perfect for Book Clubs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Other Black Girl: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Solving for X
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Solving for X - Robert B. Shaw
The Future Perfect
It will be recognizable: your neighborhood,
with of course some of the bigger trees
gone for pulp and the more upscale houses
sporting new riot-proof fencing which
they seem hardly to need in this calm sector
whose lawns look even more vacuumed than they used to.
Only a soft whirr of electric automobiles
ruffles unburdened air. Your own house looks
about the same, except for the solar panels.
Inside, the latest occupants sit facing
the wall-size liquid crystal flat TV screen
they haggle and commune with, ordering beach towels
or stockings, or instructing their stockbrokers,
while in the kitchen dinner cooks itself.
Why marvel over windows that flip at a touch
from clear to opaque, or carpets that a lifetime
of scuffs will never stain? This all was destined,
down to the newest model ultrasound toothbrush.
Only the stubborn, ordinary ratio
of sadness to happiness seems immune to progress,
and it will take more time than even you
have at your disposal to find out why.
The same and not the same, this venue fascinates,
spiriting you through closed familiar doors
on random unremarkable evenings when
you will have been gone
for how long? — Just a bit longer than your successors
have had to make these premises their own.
However much their climate-controlled rooms
glow vibrant with halogen, they will not see you.
But they may wonder why, for no clear reason,
they find their thoughts so often drawn to the past.
Back Again
The wormy apple tree
we chainsawed to a stump
is not content to be
a barren amputee.
It has produced a clump
of rank and spindly shoots,
a thicket still unthinned,
each one a witch’s wand,
suggesting that the roots
regard our surgery
as one more hostile thing
to overcome in spring,
like parried blades of wind —
mischief to live beyond.
A Bowl of Stone Fruit
Never forget the child’s face, nonplused
on touching first an apple, then a pear,
then a banana, his bewildered stare
becoming peevish as his buoyant trust
in the appearances that grown-ups prize
founders. Items for which his taste buds lusted
are for display, and regularly dusted.
Try to explain how people feast their eyes
on such a centerpiece, how they are able
to cherish a quartz peach, whose blushing skin
is bonded pigment, stone bearing within
no stone a tree would spring from. Now the table
stands taller than his head; but watch him grow,
to grow unflustered by the cold and hard
baubles adult taste holds in fond regard.
Never forget his face, first made to know.
Airs and Graces
All this was years ago — back in the days
of afternoon visits between ladies
with children brought along, resigned to boredom.
Her mother always stayed for a second cup;
her mother’s aunt, happy to be a hostess,