The One Day: A Poem in Three Parts

The One Day is a long poem that weaves the voice of a male and a female together with classic texts in an examination of middle age and its accompanying crisis. The poem, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1988, has three parts--"Shrubs Burnt Away," "Four Classic Texts" and "To Build a House"--and uses a 10-line stanza with variable line length in an experimental form. The words often strike deep into the heart of mid-life anxiety; he calls the bed "a preparation of death." But The One Day isn't all despair, it is also about a life worth living: "Work, love, build a house, and die. But build a house."