A Rollicking Old-Age Song

About the Book

This collection, written since Two Wives Ago: Selected Poems, includes poems on Isaac and strong-willed Abraham, King Lear and his troublesome daughters, the mysteries of choir practice, the historical prominence of male decapitation, a boy shot by the cops, searching the lake for a missing boy, a hippo in the bed (with the poet’s wife?), old age and decay, death-timely, too soon, too late, sweet love in youth and in old age, lilac blossoms in an outhouse, a gardener’s hopes and joys and failures, elephant dung, a skunk, a quite day at the frog pond, the history and esthetics of tattooing, a Japanese woodblock print moon, a Robert Frost tool, an E.M. Forster story, and a message which may have gone astray. Cover engraving by J.G. Posada

About the Author

Lewis C. Mainzer, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is author of Two Wives Ago: Selected Poems (2009), Political Bureaucracy: The American, Public Service, articles in various political science journals, and essays in literary reviews (Massachusetts Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Yale Review). He is former editor of Polity, The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association.