The narrators in this mesmerizing collection often desire to hold time still in moments of love, yes, but also when feeling fully located in a particular place or experience. Yet they also acknowledge that to hold time still would mean the death of...
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The narrators in this mesmerizing collection often desire to hold time still in moments of love, yes, but also when feeling fully located in a particular place or experience. Yet they also acknowledge that to hold time still would mean the death of love, the death of experience. Thus, the grounding and locating sensory images that surround us and the eye that apprehends them become greatly important. At the heart of the book is What Night Says to the Empty Boat," a sequence of lyric poems in which the three main characters Justine, Clarence, and Andy drift to and from, together and apart, viewed through the dispassionate lens of the unspoken fourth main character. An artistic and philosophical endeavor to place oneself in the world, this stunning collection is a wholehearted embrace of being, where technique and subject come together in a remarkable combination of personal lyric and formal innovation Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- I. -- Sleep Suite -- Dear Villon, -- Notes on the Night Highway (I) -- Walking through the House with a Candle, -- Nocturne -- II. -- Notes on the Night Highway (II) -- Pine Street -- Nude Asleep in the Tub -- Pinning Down the Notes -- The Book of Props -- Still Lifes and _____scapes -- III. What Night Says to the Empty Boat (Notes for a Film in Verse) -- In Traffic on the Kansas Turnpike -- The Tightrope Walker -- Justine's Childhood -- The Angels -- Justine's Childhood (Abroad) -- Andy, the Drawbridge Operator -- Andy's Monologue -- Justine's Window -- The Dream Maker -- Clarence's Soliloquy -- Prospect Street -- Aerial View of the City -- Street Festival -- Clarence at Work -- Traveling Shot through the Snowfields at Dusk -- Justine and the Lava Rocks -- Clarence and Da Vinci -- Andy, Alone in the City -- What Night Says to the Empty Boat -- Landing -- Dismantling the Scarecrow -- The Tightrope Walker -- Clarence Playing -- IV. (Three Codas) -- Machado Glosa -- Lawn Chair Meditation (V) -- In the Poem He No Longer Lives In, -- Notes/Sources -- About the Author
