| From the Book of Giants Contributor(s): Weiner, Joshua (Author) |
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ISBN: 0226890457 ISBN-13: 9780226890456 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $52.47 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: October 2006 Annotation: "Song" " " " "for Thom Gunn There is no east or west in the wood you fear and seek, stumbling past a gate of moss and what you would not take. And what you thought you had (the Here that is no rest) you make from it an aid to form no east, no west. No east. No west. No need for given map or bell, vehicle, screen, or speed. Forget the house, forget the hill. Taking its title from a set of writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, "From the Book of Giants" retunes the signal broadcast from these ancient fragments, transmitting a new sound in the shape of a Roman drain cover, in imitations of Dante and Martial, in the voice of a cricket and the hard-boiled American photographer Weegee, in elegies both public and personal, and in poems that range from the social speech of letters to the gnomic language of riddles. Out of poetry's "complex of complaint and praise," Joshua Weiner discovers, in one poem, his own complicity in Empire during his son's baseball game at the White House. In another, an embroidered parrot sings a hermetic nursery rhyme to an infant after 9/11.
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| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Poetry | American - General |
| Dewey: 811.6 |
| LCCN: 2006006188 |
| Series: Phoenix Poets |
| Physical Information: 0.47" H x 6.34" W x 8.68" (0.58 lbs) 88 pages |
| Themes: - Geographic Orientation - Arizona - Locality - Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Song
for Thom Gunn There is no east or west in the wood you fear and seek, stumbling past a gate of moss and what you would not take. And what you thought you had (the Here that is no rest) you make from it an aid to form no east, no west. No east. No west. No need for given map or bell, vehicle, screen, or speed. Forget the house, forget the hill. Taking its title from a set of writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, From the Book of Giants retunes the signal broadcast from these ancient fragments, transmitting a new sound in the shape of a Roman drain cover, in imitations of Dante and Martial, in the voice of a cricket and the hard-boiled American photographer Weegee, in elegies both public and personal, and in poems that range from the social speech of letters to the gnomic language of riddles. Out of poetry's "complex of complaint and praise," Joshua Weiner discovers, in one poem, his own complicity in Empire during his son's baseball game at the White House. In another, an embroidered parrot sings a hermetic nursery rhyme to an infant after 9/11. |
Contributor Bio(s): Weiner, Joshua: - Joshua Weiner is professor of English at the University of Maryland. He lives in Washington, DC. |