Sunday, August 27, 2006
I've been reading lug your careless body out of the careful dusk, by Joshua Marie Wilkinson. It's a "poem in fragments" and won the Iowa Poetry Prize. I was intrigued by the interesting cover (see the vices on the knees), that Joshua grew up in Seattle ("Born and raised in Seattle's Haller Lake neighborhood . . ." which is very near our own Rebecca Loudon — must be something in the water there!), and that I recognized his name as someone Floating Bridge had published in one of our anthologies a couple of years ago (turns out a previous version of some of the fragments).
It's a really interesting book, very cinematic, I think, in that it sort of reads like you are watching a movie of short related/unrelated enigmatic scenes, that build by accumulation, rather than any linear story line. It's defintely a good read.
Here's a sample, from the section "Boy-Scatter, the Sleepier & the Sleepiest:"
***
If each story
depends upon the part
the teller forgets . . .
Boy-scatter, sleeping pill sleep.
A twisted out splinter from my neck in a dream.
***
One woman kicks another in the bus station waiting area,
racoons return through a crack in the fence.
***
Is that what you mean by forgiveness?
Didn't the sockets do their job?
Were you ready and dressed when they clicked open the trunk?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Thanks for the tip on this collection. I do want to read this one.
Did you know you are famous today? http://gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com/2006/04/american-life-in-poetry-53-peter.html
Post a Comment