Calculated to reflect the sixty minutes in an hour of heightened
imaginative contemplation, the poems in Ernest Hilbert's first
book, Sixty Sonnets, contain memories of violence, historical
episodes, humorous reflections, quiet despair, violent discord,
public outrage, and private nightmares. A cast of fugitive
characters share their desperate lives—failed novelists,
forgotten literary critics, cruel husbands, puzzled historians,
armed robbers, jobless alcoholics, exasperated girlfriends, high
school dropouts, drowned children, and defeated boxers. These
characters populate love poems ("My love, we know how species run
extinct"), satires ("The way of the human variety, / Not even happy
just being happy"), elegies ("The cold edge of the world closed on
you, kissed / You shut"), and songs of sorrow ("Seasons start
slowly. They end that way too"). The original rhyme scheme devised
for this sequence--ABCABCDEFDEFGG--allows the author to dust off of
the Italian "little song" and Americanize the Elizabethan love poem
for the twenty-first century. Speaking at times in propria persona
("We'll head out, you and me, have a pint"), at times in the voice
of both male and female characters ("I'm sorry I left you that day
at MoMA"), at times across historical gulfs ("Caesar and
Charlemagne, Curie, Capone"), Sixty Sonnets marshals both trivia
and tragedy to tell stories of modern America, at last achieving a
hard-won sense of careful optimism, observing "the last, noble pull
of old ways restored, / Valued and unwanted, admired and ignored."
General
| Imprint: |
Red Hen Press
|
| Country of origin: |
United States |
| Release date: |
April 2009 |
| First published: |
February 2009 |
| Authors: |
Ernest Hilbert
|
| Dimensions: |
203 x 152 x 10mm (L x W x T) |
| Format: |
Paperback
|
| Pages: |
88 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-1-59709-361-3 |
| Categories: |
Books
Promotions
|
| LSN: |
1-59709-361-0 |
| Barcode: |
9781597093613 |
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