Beauty Like A Rope - Couverture souple

St. John, Leslie

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0985026049 ISBN 13 : 9780985026042

Editeur : Word Temple Press, 2012

Synopsis

"My body has been hostage to an idea," cries Leslie St. John, and even though this charismatic woman never loses touch with the physical fact of the body in the world, she is at her essence a metaphysical poet. "I'd like to rename every body part," she insists in the first poem here, in the hope that doing so may bring her "one day nearer to what is unnamable." It's a brave imagination that can face the body it lives in as both vehicle and obstacle, and a strong mind that can transcend that dualism. But having lost one eye in an absurd accident ("She Washed My Hair" tells the harrowing story), Leslie St. John has let the poet in her see with a unique third eye, one that sees with an accurate, compassionate, wisdom-inviting gaze. Her language is contemporary, precise and warm with breathing; her poems offer a music that sounds intimate even when one read aloud alone. Of special note is the heartbreaking "Elegy for John Mark, 2002-2004," a sequence on the death of a nephew that turns at the end toward an unearthly lyrical beauty. But in Leslie St. John's world, beauty is like a rope: it can rescue or kill. ~ Jim Cushing Leslie St. John's poem, "Things that Bend," arrested me, made me eager to keep reading (Is that not part of the writer's obligation to the reader?) the poem from its first line, in which there is a lot of strong but subtle music: inch/window/sill are assonantal half-rhymes, curl/worm half rhyme, and worm/window add a little consonantal rhyme. By the fourth line, after establishing a place, she takes us to another place, the past, I believe, and an other enters the poem. It's a love poem, a poem about time and its damage, I loved the lines, What bends short, bends long— Doesn't break. Neck of tulip, waning Clothes rod. And, yes, the rules. That the heart "splinters into tributaries" is an original way of saying something all of us come to learn if we live a conscious life. ~ Thomas Lux

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

A native of Little Rock, AR , Leslie St. John received her M.F.A. from Purdue University, where she served as poetry editor for Sycamore Review. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Indiana Review, Linebreak, Pinch, and Verse Daily. Her nonfiction has appeared in Opium and Relevant. She was nominated by Lisa Lewis and Ai for a Pushcart Prize. She won the 12th National MacGuffin Poet Hunt contest. Mark Doty chose her poem "Filling the Egg Carton" as a finalist for the 2010 Inkwell Poetry Prize. That same year, she completed her 200hour Prajna yoga teacher training with Tias Little of Santa Fe, NM. As part of her Svadhyaya self-study, she wrote a memoir/research essay on the relationship between yoga and eating disorders; she continues this exploration in her poems and essays. As a yogi and modern dancer, Leslie is interested in seeing the intersections between poetry and the body--during the creative process and within developed poems. Currently, she is teaching a yoga and creative writing workshop called "Poses and Prose." She teaches English at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Word Temple Press
• Date d'édition: 2012
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0985026049
• ISBN 13: 9780985026042
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 52
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg