Benchmarks
New and Selected Poems 1963-2013
SERIES:
The Alaska Literary Series
University of Alaska Press
Russian, German, Tlingit. Like the languages he translates, Richard Dauenhauer’s poetry offers unexpected surprises. A prolific translator who also works in Finnish, Swedish, and classical Greek, he has a poetic command of language that has earned him wide recognition over fifty years of published work. Benchmarks spans these decades of writing, and each poem contained within marks a certain place in time and space, like a surveyor’s benchmark. The poems play with language while focusing on the land and people of Alaska. And like Alaska itself, this book offers a variety of delights—readers will find a new experience with each turn.
Any reader interested in the best Alaska poetry would want Benchmarks. This book is a work of northern experience by a writer dedicated to that experience. It is a work, moreover, that could alter and deepen perception of Alaska and bring new appreciation to circumpolar literature.
The many poems included cover a wide range of subjects and approaches, each with a deft feeling for form and poetic line. The variety is hardly surprising in a book covering fifty years of poetic activity.
'Those of us privileged to know Dick Dauenhauer will remember his ready wit, his dancing eyes, his rascal’s laughter. . . . We’ll remember Dick’s many languages and how he moved with grace among so many of the world’s cultures over the centuries. . . . Those who didn’t get to meet him can get acquainted through his poetry, the fine example of his words, strong and vital, vibrant with curiosity and learning. His 'Benchmarks' remain to help us find our way.'
Richard Dauenhauer is a widely recognized translator, and several hundred of his translations of poetry have appeared in a range of journals and magazines. He is a former poet laureate of Alaska.
Acknowledgements
New Poems, Part One: The Genealogy of Beer
New Poems, Part Two: Juneau Sketches
New Poems, Part Three: Congestive Heart Failure: Letting Go
New Poems, Part Four: Excerpts from the Cycle Lacrimosa: The Social Web of Cancer
New Poems, Part Five: Harvesting
Selected Poems, Part One: Poems from Little Magazines, 1963-1969
Selected Poems, Part Two: From Phenologies
Selected Poems, Part Three: From Glacier Bay Concerto
Selected Poems, Part Four: From The Shroud of Shaawat Séek
Selected Poems, Part Five: From Frames of Reference
Afterword
About the Author
Book Publications in Creative Writing
Major Book Publications on Tlingit by Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer
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