Harriet -- Long summer -- For Mary McCarthy -- Searchings -- dream of the fair women -- Five dreams : The Old order ; Agamemnon : a dream ; The House in Argos ; The Next dream ; Onion skin -- Through the night -- The Muse : Nantucket : 1935 ; The Muses of George Grosz -- Randall Jarrell : 1914-1965 -- Munich, 1938 -- Octoaber and November : Che Ccuevara ; Caracas ; The March ; Charles Russell Lowell : 1835-1864 -- Autum in the Abstract : Alba ; In sickness ; Deutschland. Harvard -- Alcohol -- In the forties -- The Literary life, a scrapbook -- Sleep -- Blizzard in Cambridge -- Christmas and New Year : Snake ; Christmas tree ; The Dialogue ; Playing ball with the critic ; George H and George E. Lewes -- The Book of Wisdom -- Descendant ; Bird -- Mexico -- Canterbury -- Killicrankie -- Midwinter : Friend across Central Park -- Another firend -- Judith -- The Godfish -- Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in New York -- Across the Yard : La Ignota -- School : For Peter Taylor -- Randall Jarrell -- Lines from Israel : World War I, 1916 ; Sands of the Desert -- Writers : T.S. Eliot ; Erza Pound ; Ford Madox Ford -- To Allen Tate -- William Carlos Williams -- Robert Frost -- Those older. Ice on the Hudson -- My death -- February and March : Cows ; The Golden middle ; Vigil ; Le Cygne ; Thirst ; Helltime ; Utopia for racoons ; Fame ; Growing in favor ; Last Summer ; Cranach's man-hunt ; First Spring ; Rembrandt -- Pastime -- April 8, 1968 : Two walls ; Words of a y oung girl -- The Petit bourgeois -- Mania : 1958 ; 1968 -- April : Roulett ; Europa ; Redskin ; Dalliance ; The Dialogue ; The Misanthrope and the painter ; Even such ; The White goddess ; Sappho ; Antony ; A Moment ; Wind -- Power : Allah : Attila ; Clytemnestra : The Death of Count Roland ; Tamerland Old ; Boisworth Field ; Charles V by Titian ; The Army of the Duc de Nemours ; Bishop Berkley ; Old Hickory ; Sunrise ; F.O. Matthiessen : 1902-1950 ; New Year's Eve 1968. April's end : King David Senex ; Night sweat ; Caligula ; To Werner von Usslingen ; Nostalgie de lo boue -- Eloges to the spirits : Revenants ; Verdun ; Hydrotherapy ; Words for a Guinea-pig ; For Norman Mailer ; May : The Pacification of Columbia ; Violence ; Leader of the Left -- The Restoration ; De Gaulle ; The Ark ; The New York intellectual ; The Dissenting Academy ; The Doctor ; Another doctor ; New York ; Sounds in the night -- Civlization ; The Diamond cutters ; The Picture ; Lunch date ; Memorial Day. Robert Kennedy : 1925-1968 : R.F.K ; Another circle ; Another June -- To Summer : The Worst sinner ; God of our fathers ; Whites ; Heaven ; The House-party ; For Theodore Roethke : 1908-1963 -- For Eugene McCarthy -- The Immortals -- For Harpo Marx -- Milton in separation -- Stalin -- Eight months later -- Die Gold-orangen -- We do what we are : The Nihilist as hero ; Grave guild ; In the back stacks ; Reading myself -- Circles : Homing ; The Hard way ; Das Ewig Weibliche ; Sound mind, sound body ; Penolope ; Struggle of non-existence ; The Spock etc. sentences ; The Good life ; Night worms ; The Vogue, the vague ; High blood ; The Lost tune ; Heat. The Races : August ; Five-hour rally ; The Flaw ; Fear in Chicago ; "We are here to preserve disorder" ; After the convention ; The Hospital ; Forethought ; November 6 ; November 7 : from the painter's loft -- Summer : These winds ; La Condition humaine ; End of Camp Alamoosook ; Familiar quotations ; Mink ; Cattle ; The going generation ; Castine Harbor ; Joy ; Nature ; Growth ; The Graduate ; Outlivers ; My heavenly shiner ; It did ; Seals -- Father and sons : For Michael Tate ; Letter from Allen Tate -- The End : Dies irae, a hope ; On the border -- For John Berryman -- Close the book -- Half a century gone -- Obit -- Afterthought.

"'As my title intends, ' Mr. Lowell writes, 'the poems in this book are written as one poem, jagged in pattern, but not a conglomeration or sequence of related material. It is not my diary, my confession, not a puritan's too literal pornographic honesty, glad to share private embarrassment, and triumph. The time is a summer, an autumn, a winter, a spring, another summer; here the poem ends, except for turned-back bits of fall and winter 1968 ... My plot rolls with the seasons. The separate poems and sections are opportunist and inspired by impulse. Accident threw up subjects, and the plot swallowed them -- famished for human chances.