LEADER 03478nam 2200601 a 450 001 9910789748003321 005 20210519210857.0 010 $a1-283-26804-3 010 $a9786613268044 010 $a0-226-64420-0 024 7 $a10.7208/9780226644202 035 $a(CKB)2670000000113929 035 $a(EBL)767536 035 $a(OCoLC)751694179 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000538428 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)12181072 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000538428 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10559563 035 $a(PQKB)11154450 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC767536 035 $a(DE-B1597)524455 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780226644202 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL767536 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10496541 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL326804 035 $a(EXLCZ)992670000000113929 100 $a20110203d2011 uy p 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurun#---|u||u 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aLaughter before sleep$b[electronic resource] /$fRobert Pack 210 $aChicago ;$aLondon $cUniversity of Chicago Press$d2011 215 $a1 online resource (155 p.) 300 $aPoems. 311 0 $a0-226-64419-7 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tAcknowledgments --$tI. Seasons --$tII. Cherishing --$tIII. Lamenting --$tIV. Laughter --$tV. Epilogue 330 $aOne of America's most eminent nature poets, Robert Pack has won the acclaim of writers, critics, and readers from Stephen Jay Gould to Mark Strand. In his latest collection, Laughter Before Sleep, Pack carries on his themes of family and friends, responsibility to the natural world of evolved diversity, the transience of life, the fragility of happiness, and the consolations offered by art and music. Laughter Before Sleep weighs the nature of endings from the perspective of old age and embraces the humor and play of memory that keep mortality at bay. As we are carried along with Pack's lyrical, sensitive, and intelligent verse, he takes us on a moving but often comic journey toward the end of life. In the opening section, Pack composes poems that meditate upon a sense of his own diminishing and the meaning of absences. The middle sections form episodes of a memoir in verse, moving from family to history and back again, reflecting on the power of anecdote to shape a life in retrospect. With the final section, Pack recalls his unfulfilled plan to raise penguins in Montana, offers a panegyric on Darwin's nose, and makes the mistake of trying to impress a police officer with a book of poems. Filled with charm and wit but also with philosophical melancholy, Laughter Before Sleep is a superb addition to the poet's oeuvre. 606 $aGrief$vPoetry 606 $aNature$vPoetry 610 $anature, wilderness, endings, mortality, death, loss, grief, time, healing, pain, suffering, love, meaning, purpose, poetry, collection, creative writing, contemporary, literature, music, art, consolation, happiness, fragility, precocity, transience, diversity, evolution, natural world, environment, environmentalism, responsibility, family, friends, aging, humor, memory, reminiscence, looking back, absence, memoir, retrospect. 615 0$aGrief 615 0$aNature 676 $a811/.54 700 $aPack$b Robert$f1929-$0196410 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910789748003321 996 $aLaughter before sleep$93722985 997 $aUNINA