Ring of Fire (Salt Modern Poets) - Softcover

Jarnot, Lisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844710076 ISBN 13: 9781844710072

Publisher: Salt, 2003

Synopsis

Ring of Fire is a book of experimental lyric poetry in the tradition of American Poetry beginning with Walt Whitman and continuing through the Beat Generation, the New York School, and contemporary Language Poetry. Jarnot’s work represents a synthesis of traditional modes of verse alongside more fragmented avant-garde writing practices. The poems in this collection resonate with homages to the metaphysical masters of the 17th Century while commenting on popular culture in the Western world.

About this title

About the Author

Lisa Jarnot was born in Buffalo, New York in 1967. She is the author of several chapbooks as well as a full-length collection of poems, Some Other Kind of Mission, (Burning Deck Press, 1996). She currently lives in New York City and is completing a biography of the American poet Robert Duncan which will be published by the University of California Press in 2004.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Brooklyn Anchorage

and at noon I will fall in love

and nothing will have meaning

except for the brownness of

the sky, and tradition, and water

and in the water off the railway

in New Haven all the lights

go on across the sun, and for

millennia those who kiss fall into

hospitals, riding trains, wearing

black shoes, pursued by those

they love, the Chinese in the armies

with the shiny sound of Johnny Cash,

and in my plan to be myself

I became someone else with

soft lips and a secret life,

and I left, from an airport,

in tradition of the water

on the plains, until the train

started moving and yesterday

it seemed true that suddenly

inside of the newspaper

there was a powerline and

my heart stopped, and everything

leaned down from the sky to kill me

and now the cattails sing.

Edition details

• Publisher: Salt
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1844710076
• ISBN 13: 9781844710072
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108