pt. I. Diogenes -- Traveling Backwards -- Thom McCann -- 1950 -- The Truth -- What for -- From Where I Sit -- Glut -- Bronze Roosters -- Blue Like That -- 59 N. Sitgreaves -- Spaghetti -- Flute -- Love -- Bill Matthews -- Flute II -- Stomachs -- Before Eating -- pt. II. Asphodel -- Jackknife -- Jew -- Rapture Lost -- What Then? -- One Poet -- Dream III. My Dear -- Lost Shoe -- Wordsworth -- Lorca -- Rukeyser -- He Again -- Death by Wind -- Love Box -- Cooper Union -- Rose in Your Teeth -- Save the Last Dance for Me -- pt. III. Introduction to "The Preacher" -- The Preacher -- Notes on "The Preacher".
Summary:
"In Save the Last Dance, Gerald Stern gives us a collection of his intimately personal - yet universal and surprising - poems. Shorter lyric poems in the first two parts continue the satirical and redemptive vision of his last collection, Everything is Burning, while still carving out new emotional territory. The last part encompasses a long poem called "The Preachers, " in which Stern adapts the book of Ecclesiastes as a starting point for a meditation on loss, futility, and emptiness."--BOOK JACKET.
