Pulitzer Prize - winning poet Donald Justice displays his command of diverse voices and literary forms in these wide-ranging. often surprising selections - some never before collected. There are elegiac poems and stories conjuring people and places from a distant childhood, tributes to literary figures such as Wallace Stevens and Cesar Vallejo, portrayals of asylum patients and the desolution of old men, and critical essays on the power of art to ward off death. The poet's virtuosity in many forms is evident in the structured perfection of a sestina or a villanelle, free verse of various kinds, the rich prose of a short story, or the careful analysis of an essay. His personality - especially his love for music - and his creative method come through strongly, particularly when he treats the same theme in multiple genres. The ending of one story, for example, is retold as a poem; a prose memoir is summarized twice over in a group of poems. These exemplary selections reflect four decades of writing by a master now at the height of his powers.

"He is one of our finest poets, " Anthony Hecht has said of Donald Justice. Winner most recently of a 1996 Lannan Literary Award, Justice has been the recipient of almost every contemporary grant and prize for poetry, from the Lamont to the Bollingen and the Pulitzer. The present volume replaces his 1980 Selected Poems and contains, in addition, poems from the last 15 years.

This celebratory volume gives us the entire career of Donald Justice between two covers, including a rich handful of poems written since New and Selected Poems was published in 1995. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Justice has been hailed by his contemporary Anthony Hecht as “the supreme heir of Wallace Stevens.” In poems that embrace the past, its terrors and reconciliations, Justice has become our poet of living memory. The classic American melancholy in his titles calls forth the tenor of our collective passages: “Bus Stop,” “Men at Forty,” “Dance Lessons of the Thirties,” “The Small White Churches of the Small White Towns.” This master of classical form has found in the American scene, and in the American tongue, all those virtues of our literature and landscape sought by Emerson and Henry James. For half a century he has endeavored, with painterly vividness and plainspoken elegance, to make those local views part of the literary heritage from which he has so often taken solace, and inspiration. School Letting Out (Fourth or Fifth Grade) The afternoons of going home from school Past the young fruit trees and the winter flowers. The schoolyard cries fading behind you then, And small boys running to catch up, as though It were an honor somehow to be near— All is forgiven now, even the dogs, Who, straining at their tethers, used to bark, Not from anger but some secret joy.

A Study Guide for Donald Justice's "Incident in a Rose Garden," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

In OBLIVION, Donald Justice focuses his critical attention on 20th century literary matters. Engaging the battles of present trends and obsessions, he subtly explores the nature of obscurity, sincerity, style, memory, meter, free-verse, and music. OBLIVION closes with generous excerpts from Justice's own notebooks, providing a rare glimpse into the creative process of a writer whom many critics consider a central conscience of the late 20th century.

When Donald Justice wrote in “On a Picture by Burchfield” that “art keeps long hours,” he might have been describing his own life. Although he early on struggled to find a balance between his life and art, the latter became a way of experiencing his life more deeply. He found meaning in human experience by applying traditional religious language to his artistic vocation. Central to his work was the translation of the language of devotion to a learned American vernacular. Art not only provided him with a wealth of intrinsically worthwhile experiences but also granted rich and nuanced ways of experiencing, understanding, and being in the world. For Donald Justice—recipient of some of poetry’s highest laurels, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry—art was a way of life. Because Jerry Harp was Justice’s student, his personal knowledge of his subject—combined with his deep understanding of Justice’s oeuvre—works to remarkable advantage in For Us, What Music? Harp reads with keen intelligence, placing each poem within the precise historical moment it was written and locating it in the context of the literary tradition within which Justice worked. Throughout the text runs the narrative of Justice’s life, tying together the poems and informing Harp’s interpretation of them. For Us, What Music? grants readers a remarkable understanding of one of America’s greatest poets.