Ossabaw

David Hamilton edits The Iowa Review and teaches English literature at the University of Iowa. With degrees from Amherst College (AB) and the University of Virginia (PhD), he taught in Colombia and at the University of Michigan before taking his present position. The University of Missouri Press published his Deep River (2001), a memoir embedded in local history reaching far into the archaeological record. In 1992, he was a Fulbright Professor in Valencia, Spain.

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsLovesong from the MarshesFor RebeccaTo a Later Autumn“Go, Little Book”Poem Ending with Lines from an Obscure MemoirGaudy FoxOur Oldest OathNot at All Byzantine“The Edge Is What I Have”FestivalAfter LagamonSlender BatonsThe Ballad of Bender SuttonHis Armory Show, Nights of 1958Van Gogh DroppedAfter Claes OldenburgHomage to Alfred Montgomery, Corn PainterOn the Last Days of Fast TimeNeither Venice Nor BelmontFableCharlie AskedBefore the Jugs in Soaked Burlap, Before the WaterFlagging for Alfatox in a Middle FieldKindnessesNoctuaMany MoonsMarginalia Found in a Secondhand CatullusWulf and EadwacerFrom the Old English RiddlesCodaSerranilla of AranjuézThe Arab-Andalucian Lover and His LoveOssabawDustThe Blue He SeizedLooking for MotherCiaoHalf Music, Half MurmurPopular Song for a Popular SeasonTwenty Ways To Say SnowSerranilla of BarranquillaLike SmokeBeige and AvocadoWhat You Can Get Away WithToo TrilliumOrioleBlindedPapaverFrom a JournalThe Secret Lives of TreesFoucault Would Have SaidAfter MaillolBound Each to EachAnasazi BasketsOn Never Ending with . . .Poison, a partially found poemAn American SuiteFor Coyote, Song and LamentThe CollectorHaiku Composed During a Lecture

Hamilton never practises self-absorption, let alone self-aggrandizement. A consistent philosophical stance emerges, wherein what is outside the self, what is Nature, is given precedence. He has still another side, though: a playful and oblique poet who will not refuse found poems. A deeper indicator of Hamilton’s complex sensibility is his simultaneous interest in Old English poetry and Gertrude Stein.