From Publishers Weekly
This is the companion volume to Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992. "Here am I--drowned, living, loving, and insane" the first poem ends. Yet even taking on a nervous breakdown as a subject does not throw this poet into a confessional mode. The work here seems to break every rule of modern poetry, yet it succeeds. Carruth speaks in generalities about concepts such as Ecstasy and Death. Emotional landscapes are set against the harsh New England winters, creating a force of nature as violent and complicated as Robinson Jeffers's California. The veiled, elegiac stance in early sequences sets the stage for the most powerful and lyrical work in Carruth's oeuvre, the book-length "Sleeping Beauty." Here the woman, reclining in a Vermont landscape, becomes a collage of all women: friends, strangers, literary figures: "North / Means the way, loneliness, a snow-blurred field, / Existence, seeking what a life is worth." The poet relates her dreams, haunted by male figures whose names begin with H --Hamlet, Hitler, HIV. This volume displays the huge range, both in theme and form, of a poet who pushes his art to its limits, then beyond. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This companion to the award-winning Collected Shorter Poems ( LJ 4/1/92) encompasses ten previously published long poems written between 1957 and 1983, five of which appeared together in the 1970 volume For You . As Carruth admits in his introductory note, not all the pieces here are among his most critically acclaimed, but certainly some are among his best and most ambitious. Few poetic commemorations of a state are as evocative or witty as the plain-spoken "Vermont," and "The Sleeping Beauty," with its 125 verse paragraphs--by turns lyrical and harrowing, filigreed and abstract--stands as one of the most challenging and rewarding poetic sequences of the last 25 years. "Nailed to the raft of sense, swept by the magnitudes," Carruth gives the imagination full use of his considerable learning and prosodic skill, no matter how close to or far from "the authentic world" it takes him.- Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
This complement to Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems (1992) rounds up 10 poems ranging in length from 6 pages (a few of the Collected Shorter are longer) to 70 and stylistically to include blank verse, a Whitmanian long line, Carruth's distinctive verse paragraphs, free verse of greater and less regular organization, and even a few rhymed quatrains. No doubt about it, the most immediately accessible is "Vermont," Carruth's verse essay on his longtime home state, its equally longtime status as a haven for poets, its granitic temperament, its ferocious weather, and its resemblance to life itself. Next most appealing, and artistically as impressive and even more cosmic in its ambitions and implications, is the big poem on love and creativity, originally published as a separate book, The Sleeping Beauty; then the two elegies, "My Father's Face" and "Mother," and "North Winter," a sequence of nature observations as crystalline and absorbing as any in classical Chinese poetry. If they do not show Carruth to be as protean as did the totality of the Collected Shorter Poems, these 10 big, largely autobiographical works impress upon us his stature and integrity as poetic thinker. Ray Olson


From Book News, Inc.
Inappropriately cast as a latter day Robert Frost, Carruth actually shares much more of the metaphysical vastness and unyielding intellectual rigor of Conrad Aiken. This is as great as it gets in our time. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For fifty years, Hayden Carruth's poetry has been distinguished by the indelible presence of passion, compassion, and radical philosophy. Collected Longer Poems gathers the poet's choice of his narrative work and poems in sequence, including his epic on the nature of romance, The Sleeping Beauty, and meditative poems on the rural northeast that have made him the most accessible "regional" poet since Robert Frost. Our pre-eminent poet of improvisation within form, Carruth's renowned technical genius is perfectly matched to his ear for spoken language and narrative structure. By turns caustic and hilarious, his observations of that life, his own and his neighbors', ring as true as his ear for native speech. Collected Longer Poems completes the two-volume Collected Poems begun with the publication of Collected Shorter Poems in 1992, a volume that was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This is the companion volume to Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992. ``Here am I--drowned, living, loving, and insane'' the first poem ends. Yet even taking on a nervous breakdown as a subject does not throw this poet into a confessional mode. The work here seems to break every rule of modern poetry, yet it succeeds. Carruth speaks in generalities about concepts such as Ecstasy and Death. Emotional landscapes are set against the harsh New England winters, creating a force of nature as violent and complicated as Robinson Jeffers's California. The veiled, elegiac stance in early sequences sets the stage for the most powerful and lyrical work in Carruth's oeuvre, the book-length ``Sleeping Beauty.'' Here the woman, reclining in a Vermont landscape, becomes a collage of all women: friends, strangers, literary figures: ``North / Means the way, loneliness, a snow-blurred field, / Existence, seeking what a life is worth.'' The poet relates her dreams, haunted by male figures whose names begin with H --Hamlet, Hitler, HIV. This volume displays the huge range, both in theme and form, of a poet who pushes his art to its limits, then beyond. (Mar.)

Library Journal

This companion to the award-winning Collected Shorter Poems ( LJ 4/1/92) encompasses ten previously published long poems written between 1957 and 1983, five of which appeared together in the 1970 volume For You . As Carruth admits in his introductory note, not all the pieces here are among his most critically acclaimed, but certainly some are among his best and most ambitious. Few poetic commemorations of a state are as evocative or witty as the plain-spoken ``Vermont,'' and ``The Sleeping Beauty,'' with its 125 verse paragraphs--by turns lyrical and harrowing, filigreed and abstract--stands as one of the most challenging and rewarding poetic sequences of the last 25 years. ``Nailed to the raft of sense, swept by the magnitudes,'' Carruth gives the imagination full use of his considerable learning and prosodic skill, no matter how close to or far from ``the authentic world'' it takes him.-- Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.

BookList - Ray Olson

This complement to Carruth's "Collected Shorter Poems" (1992) rounds up 10 poems ranging in length from 6 pages (a few of the "Collected Shorter" are longer) to 70 and stylistically to include blank verse, a Whitmanian long line, Carruth's distinctive verse paragraphs, free verse of greater and less regular organization, and even a few rhymed quatrains. No doubt about it, the most immediately accessible is "Vermont," Carruth's verse essay on his longtime home state, its equally longtime status as a haven for poets, its granitic temperament, its ferocious weather, and its resemblance to life itself. Next most appealing, and artistically as impressive and even more cosmic in its ambitions and implications, is the big poem on love and creativity, originally published as a separate book, "The Sleeping Beauty"; then the two elegies, "My Father's Face" and "Mother," and "North Winter," a sequence of nature observations as crystalline and absorbing as any in classical Chinese poetry. If they do not show Carruth to be as protean as did the totality of the "Collected Shorter Poems", these 10 big, largely autobiographical works impress upon us his stature and integrity as poetic thinker.

Booknews