A map of the night : poems / by David Wagoner.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Front cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Acknowledgments -- Table of Contents -- 1 -- My Mother's Poem -- The First Movie -- The Other House -- My Snake -- The Fan Dance -- Whistler's Mother -- The Red Hat -- The First Tough -- Elegy for a Safety Man -- How Johnny Nolan Rescued Me -- Passing the Road Gang -- Curtsy -- Talk -- Crane Fly -- Homework in Social Studies -- Castle -- My Father's Dance -- 2 -- The Invitation -- What Do I Know? -- A Lesson from a Student -- An Assignment for Student Playwrights -- In the Green Room

The Heaven of ActorsA Visitor Calls on Joseph Conrad -- Catfish -- Mr. Bones -- On Being Asked by an Assistant to the Governor of the State of Washington for an Appropriate Quotation from a Native American to Conclude an Inaugural Speech -- An Assignment for Senior Citizens -- Trying to Write a Poem While the Couple in the Apartment Overhead Make Love -- The Moth -- 3 -- In Youngs Creek -- Stopping along the Way -- Blind Instinct -- That Bird -- Meadowlark -- A Pastoral Elegy for a Pasture -- Watching a Boa Constrictor Yawn -- The Escaped Gorilla

Judging a HogThoreau and the Mud Turtle -- The Elephant's Graveyard -- Falling Behind -- The Hunters -- For the Man Who Taught Tricks to Owls -- On a Glass of Ale under a Reading Lamp -- 4 -- Owning a Creek -- Up against the Sea -- The Right Way -- On an Island -- Rescue -- Upstream -- Letting the Grass Grow under Your Feet -- Cemetery Grass -- The Heart of the Forest -- 5 -- Free Fall -- The Presumption of Death -- For an Old Woman at the Gate -- Being Taken for a Ride -- The Driver -- The Follower -- At the Scene of Another Crime

StakeoutChanging Rooms -- In the Dark Room -- 6 -- What the Houses Were Like Then -- Man Overboard -- Moving through Smoke -- Unarmed Combat -- Attention -- At Ease -- Under Fire -- Night Reconnaissance -- The Stand-up Cell -- What the Stones Say -- On First Looking through the Wrong End of a Telescope -- The Center of Gravity -- An Old Man Sitting Down -- An Old Man Stacking Firewood -- The Old Men -- The Hero -- 7 -- The Eve of the Festival of Venus -- 8 -- Between Neighbors -- On Deck -- Fighting the Blizzard

What Billy Graham Said to Me at the FairIn the Emergency Room -- Weeds -- An Informal Elegy for Neckties -- Looking Respectable -- Doing Six Impossible Things before Breakfast -- What to Do All Day -- Thoreau and the Quagmire -- At the Deep End of the Public Pool -- In the Graveyard of Major Appliances -- The Solution to Yesterday's Puzzle -- Knots -- Cell Division -- A Snap Quiz in Body Language -- For a Man Who Wrote Cunt on a Motel Bathroom Mirror -- Night Song from the Apartment Below -- Desire -- The Spider's Eye -- The Day I Believed in God

David Wagoners wide-ranging poetry buzzes and swells with life. Woods, streams, and fields fascinate him--he happily admits his devotion to Thoreau--but so do people and their habits, dear friends and family, the odd poet, and strangers who become even stranger when looked at closely. In this new collection, Wagoner catches the mixed feelings of a long drive, the sensations of walking against a current, the difficulty of writing poetry with noisily amorous neighbors, and many more uniquely familiar experiences.

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