Shuffle and Breakdown

Cody Walker

ISBN 10: 1904130313 / ISBN 13: 9781904130314

Published by The Waywiser Press, GB, 2008

Seller Inventory # LU-9781904130314

Synopsis:

A first collection of poems from a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize in 2005 and 2006.

Yesterday

I had the thought to create an elixir
(or really, a conjuring agent) in a giant mixer―
enough to summon a ghoul or two,
so that I might stop obsessing about you.

God, my co-pilot,
told me to file it
under "Ridiculous Ideas I''ll Soon Regret."
But nothing else has worked, yet.


Scripture

Because we don''t talk about how we feel,
The stars stay lit and islands keep afloat.

Because we view our lives as funny things,
We ignore Heaven and pray the phone rings.

Because lingering holds little appeal,
We leave without a hard word or a note.

Because the only man we know who sings
Is tracking us, we hide. But the song stings.

Cody Walker serves as a writer-in-residence at Seattle''s Richard Hugo House. He also teaches English at the University of Washington and poetry through Seattle Arts and Lectures'' Writers in the Schools program. His work appears or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Shenandoah, Parnassus, Slate, Prairie Schooner, Subtropics, and Light.

About the Author: Cody Walker was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1967. He holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin, an MFA from the University of Arkansas, and a PhD from the University of Washington. He received the James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry from Shenandoah in 2003 and a Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Washington in 2005. A longtime writer-in-residence in Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools program, he was elected Seattle Poet Populist in 2007. As well as his Waywiser poetry collections, Walker is the co-editor of Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan Press, 2013). His poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Parnassus, Slate, Poetry Northwest, The Hecht Prize Anthology, and Best American Poetry (2007 and 2015); and his essays have appeared online in The New Yorker and The Kenyon Review. He lives with his family in Ann Arbor, where he teaches English at the University of Michigan.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Shuffle and Breakdown
Publisher: The Waywiser Press, GB
Publication Date: 2008
Binding: Paperback
Condition: New