ROBERT PACK [16.691]

Robert Pack 

Robert Pack (nacido el 19 de mayo de 1929, en la ciudad de Nueva York) es un poeta, crítico y Catedrático Distinguido en el Davidson Honors College de la Universidad de Montana - Missoula. Durante treinta y cuatro años enseñó en Middlebury Colegio y 1973-1995 se desempeñó como director de la Conferencia PAN Escritores. Es el autor de veintidós libros de poesía y crítica. 

OBRA:

Poesía:

Laughter Before Sleep, University of Chicago Press (2011) ISBN 9780226644196

Still Here, Still Now , University of Chicago Press (2009) ISBN 9780226644158

Elk in Winter, University of Chicago Press (2004) ISBN 9780226644141

Rounding It Out , University of Chicago Press (1999) ISBN 9780226644110

Minding the Sun , University of Chicago Press (1996) ISBN 9780226644080

Fathering the Map: New and Selected Later Poems , University of Chicago Press (1993) ISBN 9780226644059

Before It Vanishes: A Packet of Poems for Professor Pagels , David R Godine Press (1989)

Clayfeld Rejoices, Clayfeld Laments: A Sequence of Poems , David R Godine Press (1987)

Waking to My Name: New and Selected Poems , Johns Hopkins University Press (1980)

Keeping Watch, Rutgers University Press (1976)

Nothing But Light , Rutgers University Press (1972)

Home from the Cemetery , Rutgers University Press (1969)

Guarded by Women , Random House (1963)

A Stranger's Privilege , MacMillan Publishers (1959)

The Irony of Joy , Scribners (1955)

Prosa:

Willing to Choose: Volition and Storytelling in Shakespeare's Major Plays , Lost Horse Press (2007)

Composing Voices: A Cycle of Dramatic Monologues , Lost Horse Press (2005)

Belief and Uncertainty in the Poetry of Robert Frost , The New England University Press (2003)

The Long View: Essays on the Discipline of Hope and Poetic Craft , The University of Massachusetts Press (1991)* Affirming Limits: Essays on Motality, Choice, and Poetic Form , The University of Massachusetts Press (1985)

Faces in a Single Tree: A Cycle of Monologues , David R Godine Press (1984)

Wallace Steves: An Approach to his Poetry and Thought , Rutgers University Press (1958)

En un campo

Aquí, en un campo

de diabólicos pinceles,

el círculo de lejanos árboles

apiñándose, y las cercanas matas

se encorvan como ruinas

mientas la luna desmadejada flota

pasada la desolación

que despierta los gemidos de los búhos. Aquí

cual si fuéramos del mundo

los últimos amantes,

hemos arrancado de las ruinas

la ráfaga melódica

de aves quejumbrosas.

Tú, yacías dormida

respirando como respira el viento

por los húmedos cardos

el aroma de las enredaderas,

y así mientras escucho acerco

mi cuerpo hacia el tuyo

cuando en un leve espasmo

se sacude tu mano

y la luz de la luna busca un eco

en tus dientes.

Temo besarte.

Nunca he deseado tanto

no morir.

en Guarded by Women, 1963

http://descontexto.blogspot.com.es/

Arrowhead

    Where two streams joined, we met

By accident, sitting upon an outcropping of rock

With only the intent of watching

Water flow beneath unwinding water.

    Facing up-stream, she held a flower

To the sun as I leaned back and found

An arrowhead inside a crevice, which lay there

As if someone had left it by intent

As an excuse for me to speak above the whirl of water

Swirling upon stone and thus

Transform the accident of meeting her—

Ablaze in sunlight with a flower in her hand—

Into stark fact as obdurate as rock.

    Could I have called, "Look at this arrowhead

I just found here!" Would she have thought

"An accident, that's credible,"

Or feared that my intent was sinister,

And that the implication of the arrowhead,

Unlike the radiant white flower or

The two streams merging into faster water,

Casting up colored spume,

Had been contrived by me, certain as rock

That forms by geologic laws?

    She had to know an arrowhead

Is humanly designed with the intent to kill,

Though now it's harmless as a flower

Decorating someone's hair,

Or water organized into a garden fountain.

An arrowhead can now be used

As an adornment for a necklace

Like a flower in a painting where a stream

Leaps past a light-reflecting rock

With nothing in a brush-stroke left to accident.

    And so our accidental meeting on the rock

Flowed by, a flower cast upon the water

With intent unknown, and all

That's left now is the arrowhead.

OCTOBER LARCHES

Across the mountainside in evening sun

Golden October larches flare

As if they could delay dark days to come,

Winter encroaching everywhere

My momentary mind can reach.

And in the lake, silent as brooding inwardness,

The larches now are doubled, each

With a true partner in itself,

A multiplying plenitude of one,

Repeated and repeating in my mind.

Reflecting on its own reflections, stunned

With bold illumination of a kind

Beyond what golden sunlit larches teach

Of how to face the all-dividing dark, I find

A multiplying plenitude of one

Across the mountainside in evening sun.

from Elk in Winter

NOVEMBER

November, with the humming “m"

Mellifluous inside its name, 

Meanders with the now diminished stream; 

The once-green tamaracks, transformed, 

Have lost their golden needles, and I see 

The sweeping mountain vistas 

In the morning light have now regained 

Their shimmering chilled clarity. 

Now I imagine that a mellow 

And mild drowsiness begins to take hold 

In the laden rotund bodies 

Of the rumbling bears 

Who soon will all lie muffled deep 

In humid dens, dreaming 

Of what bears dream about, perhaps 

The welcoming of sleep. 

The meadow wind has dwindled 

To a murmuring, a little less 

Than any hushed and human sounds 

That mingled with the golden trees 

I well remember, and a little more 

Than what I know will soon remain 

Of memory –- brown buried leaves beneath 

Mute snow heaped on the forest floor. 

The year has whitened to a frost 

Upon each stiff unmoving branch, 

Reminding me again that I must pause 

While struggling to remember 

To remind myself of what is gone: 

The golden needles of the tamaracks, 

My dream about the dreaming bears. November, 

And I’m almost ready to move on.

                  From LAUGHTER BEFORE SLEEP