Land's End

Gail Mazur is the founder of the Blacksmith House poetry reading series, one of the oldest continuous series in the country. She has taught widely, including the graduate writing programs of Boston University, Emerson College, and the University of Houston. She has received numerous grants and awards and is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently, Forbidden City.

• AcknowledgmentsNew PoemsHall MirrorAt 4 A.M.That Was ThenMy American PoemAt Land’s EndWalking Barefoot, AugustThoreauvianThe ConversationNostalgiaEnd of SummerEastham Turnips, NovemberRest StopThe Breakwater*Josef AlbersThe High LineSnapshotsThere Came a TimeBlue Work Shirt*Early Morning WalksMore, Morefrom Forbidden City (2016)Mount FujiForbidden CityMy StudioBelieve That Even in My Deliberateness I Was Not Deliberate*ShadeAgeOn Jane Cooper’s “The Green Notebook”Philip GustonThe 70sElephant MemoryTo the Charles River*We Swam to an Island of BeesInstance of MeThe Self in Search of the SublimeThingsFamily CrucibleGrieffrom Figures in a Landscape (2011)Figures in a LandscapeHermitThe AgePoemShipwreckTo the MakersBorges in Cambridge, 1967To the Women of My FamilyHistory of My TimidityDear Migraine,Isaac RosenbergInward ConversationPost-PastoralConcordance to a Life’s Workfrom Zeppo’s First Wife (2005)Blue UmbrellaThe MissionSeptemberQueenieDana Street, DecemberZeppo’s First WifeSeven SonsWaterliliesAmerican GhazalRudy’s Treefrom They Can’t Take That Away from Me (2001)Five Poems Entitled “Questions”Michelangelo: to Giovanni da Pistoia When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine ChapelPoemsMaybe It’s Only the MonotonyYoung Apple Tree, DecemberI Wish   I Want   I NeedThe WeskitEveningGirl in a LibraryAir Drawingfrom The Common (1995)I’m a Stranger Here MyselfIn HoustonWhatever They WantBluebonnetsPoem for Christian, My StudentFoliageIcePoem Ending with Three Lines of Wordsworth’sBedroom at Arlesfrom The Pose of Happiness (1986)The Horizontal ManJewelweedReading AkhmatovaHurricane WatchFallen AngelsListening to Baseball in the CarTo RTSL, 1985from Nightfire (1978)Baseball

"In this comprehensive volume, Mazur demonstrates a remarkable mastery of poetic technique as she depicts human relationships in all of their ambiguities. . . . Here, as elsewhere, the speaker boldly and sensitively proclaims her own lack of understanding. It is this vulnerability, equipped and complemented with extensive erudition, that makes Mazur’s poems as poignant as they are accomplished in their craft."