Time and Materials

Robert Hass's work is grounded in the beauty of the physical world--in the smaller details of natural, human life. His poetry is graceful, humble, curious, and wise. Because he has published so little work, every new book is a major event in poetry, and this will be no exception.

From "Envy of Other People's Poems"

In one version of the legend the sirens couldn't sing.

It was only a sailor's story that they could.

So Odysseus, lashed to the mast, was harrowed

By a music that he didn't hear-plungings of sea,

Wind-sheer, the off-shore hunger of the birds

And the mute women gathering kelp for garden mulch,

Seeing him strain against the cordage, seeing

The awful longing in his eyes, are changed forever

On their rocky waste of island by their imagination

Of his imagination of the song they didn't sing.