David Biespiel's long poetic lines crackle with rhythmic energy and
a jazzy, bittersweet richness of language. Rolling out across the
page like darkly luminous highways, his innovative, nine-line
"American sonnets" promise adventure, offering a variant on the
sonnet form that is both lyric and dramatic and bringing his
masterful formal inventiveness to free verse. "I've come to imagine
the nine-line sonnet to be like one of those classic Thunderbirds,"
says Biespiel in his Preface, "something distinctly American: wide,
roomy, and with a robust engine." The vastly varied voices within
the poems are united by a wonderfully limber diction. Using with
revelatory precision the vocabularies of history, science, art,
sport, philosophy, religion, literature, government, and domestic
life, Biespiel has crafted a hip, melodic, elastic language that
travels the registers of expression: lush and coarse, gaudy and
austere, pliant and rigidly tough. The civility of these poems is
the form; the wildness is the bristling energy of the language.
Passionate, resilient, rich with wit and word play, these poems
affirm David Biespiel's increasing stature as a poet of remarkable
accomplishment and promise. And yet I was so unlike the others, the
young Turks and kaffiyeh-draped factotums Saying "You All in their
cool way and flying tourist class inside a cage of fireproof wigs.
Hephaestus used up drachmas for his ardent spirits and tossed by
numbers. His joy stick Worn to the nerve. Always a mix-up: not the
judge but the jester, not the lowborn. But the nursling. The
ripped, the unripped, the unripened, the wide spreading. And
always, too, the marching choirs, off-key on the Lord's Day,
Breaking into trochalpatterns at half time. I'll skip the spa for
despots and triumvirates Who sneak seconds from the griddlecakes.
To hell with inheritance. Let the trustees mix a tour de force. All
the drama I want is to be a turf man among green-helmeted horses.
And, whenever possible, to be late to things.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
