title: The Secret Meaning of Things: Poetry
author: Lawrence Ferlinghetti
description: These poems show a progressive continuity and clarity of perception that apprehends both the hard reality and luminous irreality in everyday phenomena.
zlib_text: ,
  .Jki
  *JflK
  laura gilpin
  wait whitman award winner— 1976
  the hocus-pocus
  of the universe
  
  T.H.P.O.T.U.
  $7.95
  laurci gilpin
  the hocus-pocus
  of the universe
  Selected
  by
  William
  Stafford
  from
  among
  1600
  submissions by unpub-
  lished poets,
  this collection of simple
  and direct poems is the winner of the
  Walt Whitman Award sponsored by
  the Academy of American Poets.
  Laura Gilpin writes out of a sense
  of magic, that life, even on its simplest,
  most mundane level, is mysterious and
  awesome; how we
  are connected
  to
  each other and remain connected even
  after we have gone our separate ways;
  how we are somehow part of a huge
  historical
  chain
  of
  events;
  and how
  each part, each fragment of
  it, has its
  place.
  Science,
  particularly
  biology,
  has
  been important to her, simply as an-
  other approach to this feeling of magic,
  a process of isolating details and focus-
  ing
  in on them so they can be seen
  (continued on back flap)
  
  BURLINGAME PUBLIC LIBRARY
  BURLINGAME, CA 94010
  344-7107
  BURLINGAME PUBLIC LIBRA