Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Pursuit and Other Poems
    Pursuit and Other Poems
    Pursuit and Other Poems
    Ebook157 pages1 hour

    Pursuit and Other Poems

    By David J. Murray

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Pursuit and Other Poems offers a new collection of poetry presented in two parts, each of which highlights an extreme event that is part of a romantic experience. The first part is entitled Ode in Emerging from an Overdose, a single long poem that describes author David J. Murrays feelings when he was rescued from an unpremeditated suicide attempt. The second part is entitled Pursuit and contains 114 poems that chronicle Murrays emotional experiences with unrequited love.

    Deeply personal and yet universal in nature, Murrays verse speaks to the hope and heartbreak of the human experience with love.

    If Revisited

    If you can grab your woman too abruptly,

    If you forget that her birthday is today,

    If you assume your desire for her is equalled

    By her desire for a romp with you in the hay,

    If you dare think a fuzzy morning stubble

    Turns her right on, and that she desires you more,

    If you assume that it is her bounden duty

    To have the dishes done the night before,

    If you dare think that your mind analytical

    Is prejudice-free and objective more than hers,

    And that her place is really in the kitchen

    And not among lites or raconteurs,

    Then you will trail behind her in the mall,

    While she looks out for someone rich and tall.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateJun 20, 2011
    ISBN9781462014033
    Pursuit and Other Poems
    Author

    David J. Murray

    David J. Murray has published twelve books of poetry. Born in 1937 and raised in Manchester, England, he earned a doctorate at the University of Cambridge. Now emeritus professor of psychology at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and a resident of Toronto, he has published scholarly books, articles and encyclopaedia entries.

    Read more from David J. Murray

    Related to Pursuit and Other Poems

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      VAGRANT & VULNERABLE

      Aug 16, 2017

      VAGRANT & VULNERABLE
      11 min read

    • Article

      To Be Free of Time: The Millions Interviews Samantha Harvey

      May 13, 2020

      Without sleep there’s no shock absorbency for the body or mind; nothing is felt mildly or gently. The post To Be Free of Time: The Millions Interviews Samantha Harvey appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Vagrant & Vulnerable

      Aug 16, 2017

      Vagrant & Vulnerable
      12 min read

    • Article

      Kaveh Akbar

      Dec 13, 2017

      Alice James Books I try not to think of God as a debt to luck but for years I consumed nothing that did not harm me and still I lived, witless as a bird flying over state lines. —from “Personal Inventory: Fearless (Temporis Fila)” HOW IT BEGAN: When

      2 min read

    • Article

      Kaveh Akbar

      Dec 5, 2017

      Alice James Books I try not to think of God as a debt to luck but for years I consumed nothing that did not harm me and still I lived, witless as a bird flying over state lines. —from “Personal Inventory: Fearless (Temporis Fila)” HOW IT BEGAN: When

      2 min read

    • Article

      On Apocalyptic Poetry

      Jun 25, 2018

      On Apocalyptic Poetry
      14 min read

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: Nevertheless, Live

      Aug 16, 2018

      Poetry Rx: Nevertheless, Live
      5 min read

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: No Feeling Is Final

      Mar 29, 2018

      Poetry Rx: No Feeling Is Final
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Anne K. Yoder

      Dec 12, 2021

      Reading Levy helped me envision a way to write myself again into existence, to remake a home and a life, to visualize it as the adventure I was thrust into. The post A Year in Reading: Anne K. Yoder appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: I Woke to Myself

      Feb 7, 2019

      Poetry Rx: I Woke to Myself
      6 min read

    • Article

      Soul Mining

      Sep 1, 2022

      Soul Mining
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Poetry Of Perseverance

      Aug 15, 2018

      The Poetry Of Perseverance
      11 min read

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: You All Have Lied

      May 17, 2018

      Poetry Rx: You All Have Lied
      5 min read

    • Article

      Amy Tan's Lonely, ‘Pixel-by-Pixel’ Writing Method

      Dec 10, 2013

      Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” helps remind the Joy Luck Club author to capture the “microscopic” details that make her characters unique.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

      May 6, 2021

      Say Hello, Wave Goodbye
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Mairead Small Staid

      Dec 7, 2022

      Mairead Small Staid reflects on 2022 through the books she read. The post A Year in Reading: Mairead Small Staid appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Pursuit and Other Poems

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Pursuit and Other Poems - David J. Murray

      Pursuit

      and other poems

      romantic extremes

      David J. Murray

      iUniverse, Inc.

      Bloomington
      Pursuit and Other Poems
      Romantic Extremes

      Copyright © 2011 by David J. Murray

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      iUniverse

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.iuniverse.com

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      ISBN: 978-1-4620-1405-7 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4620-1404-0 (dj)

      ISBN: 978-1-4620-1403-3 (ebk)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2011906665

      Printed in the United States of America

      iUniverse rev. date: 06/10/2011

      Contents

      Introduction

      Ode on Emerging from an Overdose

      Pursuit

      August

      Morningscape: 5 a.m.

      Morningscape: The Moon Is Real

      Morningscape: August

      Morningscape: Vista

      Morningscape: Wakening

      September

      Glow

      Too Near

      Quiet Comes the Sun

      Artspeak

      My Apartment

      Transcendence

      Corridors

      You, Seated

      Venture

      Longing

      Colours

      Closeness

      Cross Grain

      Requiredness

      October

      Hopes

      Strand in Distance

      A Trick of the Light

      For Every Moment

      Wind-Stop

      Wind-Moment

      Wind-Breath

      Wind-Howl

      Dress Code

      Notspeak

      Thinking of You

      November

      Leaves

      Heart-Clutch

      How Do I Feel?

      Diamond

      Surprises

      Hiatus

      Softness

      I Have No Appetite

      December

      Holiday

      Nearness

      January

      Panorama

      Winterscape

      Onslaught

      From Room to Room

      Zoo in January

      Portrayals

      If Revisited

      February

      Another Revisitation

      Your Voice

      More on Your Voice

      Monolith

      February

      Greetings

      Resting Place

      My Calendar

      Besotted

      March

      White Was the Light

      Your Dress

      Homage to Swan Lake

      Dancing for You

      No Place Out There

      A Slight, Immaculate Touch

      A Special Gift

      How Lightly the Light Sits …

      Responses to You

      Unheralded

      Desisting

      Dating

      Differential Threshold

      April

      Animal

      I Cannot Charm Thee

      On and On …

      Words

      Mental

      Verbal

      What I’ll Give

      What I Want

      Springtime’s Breath

      Wonderful

      Oh God, It’s Only Saturday

      Eventually

      Grammar Lesson

      May

      When the Fog Lifts

      Your Presence

      The Barrier

      Night Begins

      A Generative Mind

      Reading

      Treetops

      Each Night that Dawns

      Blossoms

      Fireworks, Again

      Your Hair

      Fires of Artifice

      June

      Her Arms

      I Don’t Understand Myself

      Wanting

      The Miracle of Life

      Resistance Level?

      Spontaneous Generation

      July

      Fireworks Yet Again

      Download

      I’ll Want to Know

      Relief

      You

      August

      Shoreline

      The Streamline

      The Hours Fall By

      September

      How Late the Dawn Is

      The Marvelous and Mystical and Magical

      October

      Portrait

      It Is You …

      Fade Out

      Introduction

      This volume of poetry, my sixth, is in two parts. The first part is a single long poem that was written much earlier in my life, during the dying phases of a relationship that had gone wrong. The second part is a collection of poems written during the course of a different relationship that took place at a much later time. But the two parts have something important in common; both represent the thoughts of somebody caught in extreme situations of the kind that can arise all too easily in the course of heterosexual human romance.

      In the long poem that starts the volume, the author describes what it felt like to have made a suicide attempt, an extreme act that many people cannot even imagine trying to carry out. The relationship that sparked it had degenerated into a long-distance affair conducted mainly by telephone. One evening I was sitting alone in my room, drowning my frustrations in a bottle of vodka. At the bottom of the bottle, when life, like the bottle, seemed decidedly empty rather than full, an incident prompted me suddenly, in a state of alcohol-fueled incapacity, to swallow all the sodium amytal pills that I had been prescribed in order to alleviate the emotional stress that weighed on me. Some friends had been alerted to my state of mind, and it was through their intervention that the authorities entered my residence and found me comatose. I was taken to hospital where I was successfully treated. The poem begins at the point where I wake up in the recovery room of a local hospital. What the poem doesn’t say was that, among the first thoughts to enter my waking brain, was a sentence to the effect that, since I was still alive, I must have failed again.

      The title of the set of 114 short poems that constitutes the second part of the book is simply Pursuit. No other title will do. I have not even tried to put a gloss of rationality or of moderation onto the fact that I unexpectedly met somebody to whom I was so instantly, and intensely, attracted that the only explanation was that I must have experienced love at first sight. So I pursued her. Among the modes I adopted for the pursuit was to

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1