A Cluster of Noisy Planets (American Poets Continuum, 190) - Softcover

Rafferty, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1950774473 ISBN 13: 9781950774470

Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd., 2021

Synopsis

Charles Rafferty’s latest collection of prose poems turns philosophical. In A Cluster of Noisy Planets, Rafferty captures the rhythms and patterns of life as a lover, father, and poet, distilling each moment to its essence and grounding them collectively in the wider perspective of a changing world, the constant turning of the stars and the changing seasons of the New England countryside. With a knowing nod to the passage of time―day to day, year to year, epoch to epoch―these lyrical poems form a record of the profound, ephemeral joys, losses, and echoes of commonplace moments.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Rafferty is the author of 14 poetry books and chapbooks, most recently The Smoke of Horses (BOA Editions, 2017), Something an Atheist Might Bring Up at a Cocktail Party (Mayapple Press, 2018), and The Problem With Abundance (Grayson Books, 2019). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, O, Oprah Magazine, The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Rhino, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. His stories have been collected in Saturday Night at Magellan’s (Fomite Press, 2013) and Somebody Who Knows Somebody (Gold Wake Press, 2021). He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Currently, he co-directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College and teaches in the Westport Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Sandy Hook, CT.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Pond

The world is in short supply. This field of goldenrod will never be enough, and the ocean feels suddenly crossable. In every apple an orchard waits, but who has 20 years to cultivate it? Above our house, the contrails of the jets have turned into actual clouds. The rain they promise is another lie. Meanwhile, the taste of my blood implies that I am rusting, that a broken machine lies half-submerged in the pond I carry with me.

Edition details

• Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1950774473
• ISBN 13: 9781950774470
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80