{"product_id":"his-only-merit-paperback","title":"His Only Merit - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eBenjamin Green\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen I finished compiling poems for my collection entitled \u003cem\u003eOld Man Looking through a Window at Night, \u003c\/em\u003e I thought I was done writing poetry. After all, it had taken twenty-six years to collect enough work for another full-length collection. I was sixty-six years old; there did not seem time enough to gather poems for another book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen, I read \u003cem\u003eThe Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, \u003c\/em\u003ethe 1954 Knopf edition. Immediately, I started writing responses to the work. Some of the reactions became \"after\" poems; some of the writing sounded like a reply. I conversed with Stevens' poetry, and I conversed with Stevens, the man. Sometimes we argued; sometimes we agreed. Within a month, I had nineteen poems-this chapbook.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe nineteen poems allowed me to acknowledge Stevens' influence as a modern poet using my landscape--a high desert canyon in New Mexico--as the setting. The language is mine; the vocabulary is mine (even if Stevens' work prodded me toward intellectual abstraction).Reading Stevens produced nineteen poems, definitely un-modern, the true work of a spiritual introvert living under a ribbon of sky between steep walls of rock.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 34\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.08 x 8.5 x 5.5 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e September 30, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50835785023685,"sku":"9798899901904","price":27.2,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0757\/6718\/5605\/files\/SdS1W-lQOX9798899901904.webp?v=1793267465","url":"https:\/\/selloorium.com\/products\/his-only-merit-paperback","provider":"Selloorium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}