Dare Say (Winner of the Contemporary Poetry Series Competition) - Softcover

Marshall, Tod

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820324620 ISBN 13: 9780820324623

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2002

Synopsis

Eschewing irony for direct statement, the poems in Tod Marshall's first collection imagistically, musically, and passionately articulate a faith in human transcendence. From the mud of our formation (""Choir"") to the dust of our dying (""After Kandinsky""), Marshall's poems lyrically obsess over how the broken and violated can envision and speak a heaven of which we know. Three long poems that shape the book are formative in this process. From the structured order of Bach's Goldberg Variations looming behind the opening poem, ""Eclipse,"" to the clash of pagan beauty and traditional religiosity in ""Botticelli,"" to the Modernist meditation on form in ""After Kandinsky,"" the poems return again and again to the idea of anagogical presence and how it can be best rendered in art to inspire a celebratory ethos of living. Are the violent and shocking events those that best slap us awake? Or are the gentle, lyrical moments the times when we are most keenly aware of the song that is Being? In ""After Kandinsky,"" Marshall writes, like syntax; a poem that fixes the body; to a specific place; of points and lines and planes; and yet moves to celestial music; a poem that tests; on fifteenth century truth; ""Whoever loves much does much""; a poem that glistens with an unmatched insistence; a poem that arrives on time; and demands everyone; nail it to the wall. Here is a declaration that one could nail manifesto-like to the wall as a pronouncement of the need to see, to hear, and to speak of divinity in the world.

About this title

Review:

Marshall's debut collection is a startling, compelling, and simply gorgeous book of poems. This is a poet who believes passionately and profoundly in the power of beauty and art--yet trusts neither entirely. Impeccably crafted and stylishly adept, these poems speak to both the losses of our cultural history as well as to the hopes we still hold to renew this moment of our present. Dare Say marks the arrival of an impressive and powerful young poet. --David St. John In Marshall's brilliant first book, he dares the reader to see, hear, and claim the divinity available in the world. Here are poems as bound to the past as to the present, at home as much within the visual as the musical, instructed as much by Bach and Botticelli as by the convulsive beauty of Kandinsky. Rarely have I seen a debut of such range and mastery. I'm grateful for the vast humanity and intelligence of this book. Read it! --Claudia Keelan In Dare Say, Marshall announces something entirely unexpected yet dearly, dearly welcome: the future of modernism. In these poems, energies beloved by Cummings and Pound, masses deployed by Williams and Stevens, combine anew, refreshed by Marshall's deeply intelligent care. Dare Say resounds as a clarion and challenge to all poets of the rising generation. --Donald Revell

About the Author:

Tod Marshall teaches at Gonzaga University and is the author of Range of the Possible, a collection of interviews with contemporary poets. His poetry, essays, interviews, and reviews are widely published.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0820324620
• ISBN 13: 9780820324623
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88