Unique, inimitable expressions of romantic love from a the National Book Award-winning poet, the great Irish American bard.
The love poems of the Great American poet Alan Dugan rival those by Catullus and Neruda for their insight and wit that have offered solace and entertained readers for decades and beyond.
Caustic, lustful and dark, these are yet beautiful expressions of the lionhearted Irish American poet, the core of his art, blending hurt and hardship with a powerful belief in the driving force that love is.
From “Love Song: I and Thou,” in Poems (1961):
I can nail my left palm
To the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself:
I need a hand to nail the right,
A help, a love, a you, a wife.
And from “Night Scene before Combat” in Poems Six (1989):
… I should get back
to the truck I I left idling
by the curb, but I turn to you
for one last time in sleep, love,
before I put my uniform back on,
check my piece, and say So Long.
ALAN DUGAN (1923–2003) won the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize for his first book, Poems. Each subsequent book was simply titled in sequence. His last volume, Poems Seven, won Dugan his second National Book Award. Dugan also won the Pulitzer Prize, the Prix de Rome, and an award in literature from the American Academy and the Institute of Arts and Letters. He was a fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships.
