For the Sake of the Light: New and Selected Poems(Alaska Writer Laureate)

About the Book

This collection of new and selected poems by the former poet laureate of Alaska, Tom Sexton, opens a door on the essence of life in Alaska and Maine. Sexton divides his year between the two states, and he captures here the small but powerful sensual details of day-to-day life in these contrasting, yet similar, environs. His carefully crafted verse distills the birch and aspen, lynx and ptarmigan, and the snow on high peaks. Through his poems we thrill to experience encounters with the wild, the seasons, and the sublime landscape.

     “His language is clear, without tricks or fancy moves, yet his directness is powerful, and the effects are human”—Paul Zimmer, Georgia Review

Table of Contents:
New Poems   Eiders   Passamaquoddy Bay   Lubec, Maine   Night-Herons   At East Machias   In Waldo County, Maine   Crossing the Blueberry Barrens   A Harvard Millerite Ascends   Uncle Eli Glover Moving   The Banishment of Saint Columba   Trawl   Arnprior, Ontario   On the Empire Builder Heading West   Burial Ground   The Emperor   Broad Pass, September   Cow Parsnip   Mountain Bluebirds   Beluga Point   Cottonwood Seed   Porcupine   At the Turning of the Season   That Other World   Summer Waterfall   Butterfly Lake   Juncos   Snow Buntings   Steller's Jay   Steller's Sea Cow, 1742-1768   Ursus Maritimus, the Polar Bear   Driving Toward Nenana   Cottonwood   Mountain Lake   Walking the Marsh   Mew Gulls   Snowy Owl   Looking to the West   Brown Creeper   A Necessary Poem   A Snowy Morning in May   The Man Who Learned Dena'ina   Clear and Cold   Two Ravens in a Tree   Tugs   Under Polaris   Dawson City, Yukon Territory   Signs of Spring   Wild Swans   Saint Lucia's Day   The Kite Flyers   Redpolls   The Iris Hunters from Terra Incognita (1974)   Terra Incognita   Uncle Paul   Astoria   At Daybreak   December from Late August on the Kenai River (1991)   Poolshark   Anchorage   Homer   Trapper Creek   The Wedding of Cecelia Demidorf   Compass Rose   Nikolaevsk   Saint Marys   On Reading Wang Wei   Late August on the Kenai River   Open Season   Two Poems for the Solstice   Harvest from A Bend Toward Asia (1993)   Kodiak   Yakutat   El Dorado   Chitina   Gulkana Berry Pickers   The Princess Line   Chenega   Cygnus   -60   De Rerum Natura: or Of Nature's Things   In the Snow    Ritual   Waiting for Spring   Aleutians   Iris   Extending the Range   Springs   After the August Rains   Wolves   Pass Creek   Hurricane    Walking to the Beaver Pond with My Wife   On the Russian River   The Marsh in Spring   Sweet Spring Grasses   Crows on Bare Branches   Wind   Muskeg from A Blossom of Snow (1995)   Naming   Winter Landscape   Burnet   Lin He-Jing   Towns   Lament   King Island   Beluga   Pleiades   Transformations   Marsh Violets   Crows   Homage to Neidecker   Fiddlehead from Leaving for a Year (1998)   Thinking of Yu Fu on a Summer Evening   Leaving for a Year   Crossing the Divide   At Feng-Hsiang   Poem Begun on Mother's Day   Portage La Prairie   Melting Snow from Autumn in the Alaska Range (2000)   On the Death of a Homeless Man   Rowing Toward the Spirit World   For Art and Anna on Their Wedding Day   Spirit Houses at Tazlina   The Alaska Range   The Cross Fox   Rowan Tree   A Blessing   Landscape   A Letter to Tu Fu   Touch-Me-Not   Solstice   In Glacial Light   The Bear that Visits Our Cabin   Willow Ptarmigan   Lynx   Blue Flag   Wilson's Warblers   The Mountains in Winter   Winter Solstice   The Gift of Snow   Winter Finch   Denali   Poem About the Moon   Rising from the Dark   April   Poem Written Near Hurricane   Autumn in the Alaska Range   Numen   Paradise Valley   Setosa   Epitaph   For the Sake of the Light from World Brimming Over (2003)   By an Abandoned Railroad Line   In the Kitchen   Butcher Bird   American Dippers   Pastoral   Kinglet   At Fort Egbert   Nearing Solstice   Bohemian Waxwing   At Dusk   Teslin Lake, Y.T.   A Flicker's Nest   The Mountains   Blueberries

About the Author :
Tom Sexton was poet laureate of Alaska from 1995 to 2000. He is the author of eight books of poetry. His latest, A Clock with No Hands, is a collection of poems about his childhood in Lowell, Massachusetts. Sexton winters in Eastport, Maine, and summers in Anchorage.

Review :
"His language is clear, without tricks or fancy moves, yet his directness is powerful, and the effects are human." - Paul Zimmer, Georgia Review"