Corrupted into Song

Alvin Feinman (1929-2008) taught literature at Bennington College from 1969 to 1994. He was the author of Preambles and Other Poems and an expanded edition of that work, Poems (Princeton). He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated at Brooklyn College, the University of Chicago, and Yale University. Feinman's wife, Deborah Dorfman (1934-2015), taught literature at Temple University, Wesleyan University, and SUNY Albany. Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of the Humanities and English at Yale University. James Geary is deputy curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and the author, most recently, of I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World.

• Foreword by Harold Bloom ix The Constant Crime of Speech: The Life and Work of Alvin Feinman, by James Geary 1 PREAMBLES I Preambles 23 Old World Travelogue 26 Landscape (Sicily) 27 II Pilgrim Heights 31 The Sun Goes Blind 32 Scene Recalled 33 Solstice 34 Snow 35 Waters 36 Waters (2) 37 Earth and Sorrows 38 III Relic 41 Three Elementary Prophecies 42 1. For Departure 42 2. For Passage 43 3. For Return 44 What Speaking Silent Enough? 45 That Ground 46 This Face of Love 47 For the Child Unanswered in Her 48 Relic (2) 49 Relic (3) 50 Responsibilities and Farewell 51 The End of the Private Mind 52 This Tree 53 Death of the Poet 54 IV Statuary six poems 57 1. Tags, or Stations 57 2. All of This 58 3. Portrait 59 4. Sentinel 60 5. L'Impasse des Deux Anges 61 6. Covenant 62 Noon 63 True Night 64 Annus Mirabilis 65 Mythos 66 Mythos (2) 67 Visitations, Habitats 68 V November Sunday Morning 71 Stare at the Sea 72 Swathes of March 73 Stills: From a 30th Summer 74 Late Light 75 Day, Daylong 76 Double Poem of Night and Snow 77 Circumferences 78 LISTENING I Summer, Afternoon 83 At Sunset 84 Cancellations 85 1. Graffiti 85 2. Hiatus: Between Waking and Waking 86 Nightfall 87 II Listening FOUR POEMS 91 1. Morning, Arraignment with Image 91 2. The Listening Beasts, the Creatures 92 3. Then Leda 93 4. False Night, or Another 94 Wet Pavement 95 Second Marriage Song 96 THE UNPUBLISHED POEMS I The Way to Remember Her 101 For Lucina 102 Letter to Jane 103 For Enid and Jerry 104 Soliloquy of the Lover out of Season 105 The Reading 106 Sunset with Male Figure 108 [ untitled ] 109 [ untitled ] 110 [ untitled ] 111 A Farewell to the Grammarian of the Heart 112 In Praise of Space and Time 113 II Intruder 117 Lament for the Coming of Spring 118 Backyard, Hoboken, Summer 119 Evening in the Gentile Town 120 The Islander 121 Matinal 122 III Socratic Adieu 125 Neither/Nor 126 Song 127 Song for Evening 128 Postlude for the Metaphysician 129 [ untitled ] 130 Epilogue: Zone and Invocation 131 The Innocents 132 [ untitled ] 133 [ untitled ] 134 Preamble for a Stone Age 135 Stanzas for W. B. Yeats 136 IV Song of the Dusting Woman in the Library 139 Natura Naturans 140 An Heretic to Heretics 141 A Motive for the Fallacy of Imitative Form 142 Fragment for the Necessary Angel 143 The True Spain 144 Moon 145 War Dance of the Apocalyptic Pagan 146 Stone Anatomies 147

"These poems do have a strong center, which springs from the speaker's intelligence, his measured rhythms and use of rhyme, and his sometimes detached outlook as he examines the world around him... Feinman's work deserves a broader audience."--Elizabeth Lund, Washington Post "A riveting collection by a poet who deserves to be better known."-- Carol Rumens, The Guardian