{"product_id":"of-the-great-house","title":"Of the Great House","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"A book of poems should have exactly the same fullness and risk and lay itself open to the same judgment as a life,\" says Allen Grossman. \u003cem\u003eOf the Great House\u003c\/em\u003e, which includes sections of \u003cem\u003eA Harlot's Hire\u003c\/em\u003e (1961), Grossman's first published book, as well as his most recent poetry, presents an anatomy of the poet's working life. The title poem invokes \"the sighted singer, in a\/Passionate, laboring house,\" who confronts those figures in his unconscious which influence and interfere with poetic vision, braving the necessary destructions until \"there is nothing in place of what\/I know, the only thing that is--the world.\" Part II, \"The Pictures in a Man's Life,\" seeks out relationships among the haunting, inspiring, \"demonically incoherent facts of life in the world--the poet's parents, yellowwoods blooming on a lawn, closeness to an earlier self. \"The Dream Which Wakes the Sleeper Does Not End\" contains poems from an earlier life, and \u003cem\u003eOf the Great House\u003c\/em\u003e closes with \"An Inventory of Destructions,\" a summing and a summoning: \"the poet speaks to the unborn in the\/language of the born, and to the born he speaks\/The language of the unborn--Break down and build!\/Destructions are of the poet. Death is of God.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New Directions Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48833666908365,"sku":"9780811208352","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0557\/1529\/9533\/files\/imageloader_68bafbea-842b-4d13-9503-b5975aa16612.jpg?v=1790892755","url":"https:\/\/booksatmidnight.com\/products\/of-the-great-house","provider":"Books At Midnight","version":"1.0","type":"link"}