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Time's
Fancy
The
1995 Banta Award BOOK Central themes are change, and life's relentless flow. "The Furnace Men," he observes ruefully, "are too young. No more than/Twenty, twenty-two. I had pictured/Taciturn, grizzled codgers, all wisdom and expertise..." The wistful "Pastoral" begins, "They say it was the absence of cows/That brought this old barn down..." and ends with the plaintive query, "Who'll off to market, singing cows, cows?" Humor survives in poems about sweet corn and Beethoven/bird symphony, but in others, grown children bring home chilling evidence that a parent's love is no defense against the dangers of the world. The poet's own father, crippled since young manhood with multiple sclerosis, is another frequent subject. "Who were you,/Father, limp in your grimacing wheelchair, before/The myelin stripped its finery from your spine?" the son wonders, in "Strips." In "Personal Effects," old photographs lay bare the startling, hidden past. Though most of the poems are written in free verse, Wallace has also skillfully employed complicated forms such as sonnet, ballade, and canzone. Several of these have exotic settings, but in "Canzone: Siesta Key" tourists are haunted by northern snow even in the Florida heat. A set of humorous sonnets recalls his grade school teachers, good and bad, and the beginnings of poetic inspiration. Time's Fancy takes its title from W.H. Auden's poem "As I Walked Out One Evening," from which are likewise borrowed the poignantly lovely verses that introduce and set the mood for its various sections. Time in all its sadness and sweetness is indeed Ronald Wallace's subject, and he portrays it with stunning versatility. Yet his poetry remains happily familiar and accessible, a gift to the literary legacy of Wisconsin, the nation, and us all. The
AUTHOR Ronald Wallace is a nationally recognized writer whose poems, stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. His books include five collections of poetry, three critical works, an edited anthology, and four poetry chapbooks. He is Halls-Bascom Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he edits the UW Press Poetry Series and administers The Madison Review literary magazine as well as other literary programs. Among his many awards for writing and teaching are the Cairn Poetry Prize, the Porter Butts Award in the Creative Arts, Distinguished Teaching Awards in 1984 and 1991, and the 1994 Gerald A. Bartell Award in the Arts. In 1994 the Wisconsin Library Association honored him as a Notable Author. Born in 1945 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Wallace came to Wisconsin in 1972, after receiving M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Michigan. From Plums, Stones, Kisses & Hooks (1981) through People and Dog in the Sun (1987) and Time's Fancy (1994), the landscape and people of southern Wisconsin have been an essential and colorful aspect of his work. His 1991 collection The Makings of Happiness won the Council for Wisconsin Writers Posner Poetry Award and WLA Outstanding Achievement Recognition. Ron and his wife Peg, who is Associate Director of the Wisconsin Humanities Council, divide their time between Madison and their 40 acre Richland County farm. They have two daughters, Emily, a UW-Madison music student, and Molly, who works on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. 1995
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