A Fierce and Tumultuous Joy

Poems New and Selected

David Adams Richards

• Publisher: Pottersfield Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781989725962
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie

In this collection of deeply personal poetry, David Adams Richards offers readers both his searing observations of and profound sympathy for those he writes of, be they his own family or animals, like the "dry doe" who will soon be at the mercy of the coyotes. He captures the soul of winter in a crisp, evocative description: it is a time when "the snow begins to fall at four, / And a dead cold has entered in the bones." Equally, though differently, captured is a snapshot of life at fourteen, when he and his friends were "Young lonesome firebrands / Cigarettes aglow in the summer weather."

Here, too, are indictments of war and comments on Catholicism and faith, as well as retrospective examinations of his own past, of past relationships, and moments lost in time. Richards comments unflinchingly on the poet's life (the poet as soldier, as gunslinger), of his origins in Newcastle, New Brunswick, and his love for Peg at seventeen. In each poem, he crafts a vision and carefully cradles emotion in his writer's hands for the reader to feel and hold themselves. Ultimately, Richards assures us, our soul will be free and will "sing for eternity."

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Poems from Wild Green Light
• For Such Men Who Fought In Battles
• One October Day
• In The Rome Airport
• Alden Nowlan
• Summer
• The Schoolyard
• Margaret Richards (Nee Adams)
• Winter Testament
• Spring Testament
• The Journey
• Circus
• Newcastle, Winter of 1956
• The Lilliputian Looks Up
• Autumn Testament
• Travel
• Winter Love
• Networking
• Old Poets Are Dogs
• Love
• Dry Doe In Late October
• Anton
• New Poems
• The Man who Loves my Children
• The New Learning Curve
• A Night at the Party
• Hunting With My Father When I Was Eight Years Old
• Lost Pay, September 19, 1958
• 1977 Midwinter
• I Forget the Anthologies I’m In
• Hail to Robbie
• Ron Cook
• Teaching Children
• A Night Years Ago
• A Note to the Lovers of Verse
• The Goodbye, 1966
• Duran
• The Murder of Flora Bins
• Untitled
• November 23, 1956
• The New Man
• For Those Who Have Read Blood Ties
• Life Lesson At Eight Years Old
• Sunday With My Love At Home, 1978
• Burnt Church
• In Memory Of Eric Trethewey
• Anton at Twenty-six in the Midst of the Pandemic
• In a River Kitchen, 1980
• Our Mills and Mines
• University
• Much Like a Soldier This Poet’s Life
• Linda’s Place (1965)
• The Power and The Glory
• I Came to a Canada
• Betrayal
• Culloden 1746
• Letter to a Friend
• The Greater Testament
• When You Get Back From Sicily
• Parting at the Station in Vocklabrook
• Hostile Takeover
• Joe
• Emperor and Poet
• Note From My Youth
• Peg At Seventeen
• A Trip to the Outer Island
• Flora and Fauna
• Winter Testament 2
• Hope in the Desperate Hour
• A Note to Dylan Thomas
• Fishing The Bartibog
• October 1968
• Traditional
• Dungarvon 2
• Ann Marie
• 1660
• Last Poem Before a Dark Winter Night
• My Wish for You
• Dostoyevsky
• His Wife Picked Flowers
• After the War
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author