American Ghost Roses

by Stein, Kevin

• ISBN13: 9780252072406
• ISBN10: 0252072405
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-30
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

In his first book as the poet laureate of Illinois, Kevin Stein shoulders an array of poetic forms, blending pathos, humor, and social commentary. These poems--ranging from meditative narratives to improvisational lyrics--explore art's capacity to embody as well as express contemporary culture. Stein embraces subjects as various as his father's death, magazine sex surveys, Kandinsky's theory of art, the dangling modifier, Jimi Hendrix's flaming guitar, racial bigotry, and a teacher's comments on a botched poem. Presiding over this miscellany are ghosts of a peculiarly American garden of dreamers and beloved misfits, those redeemed and those left fingering the locked gate.Kevin Stein is Poet Laureate of Illinois and the Caterpillar Professor of English at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. He is the author of the poetry collections A Circus of Want, Bruised Paradise, and Chance Ransom, as well as the critical studies James Wright: The Poetry of a Grown Man, and Private Poets, Worldly Acts: Public and Private History in Contemporary American Poetry.A volume in the Illinois Poetry Series, edited by Lawrence Lieberman

Author Biography

Kevin Stein is the poet laureate of Illinois and the Caterpillar Professor of English at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.

Table of Contents

One
Wishful Rhetoric	3	(4)
Two
To the Reader Awakened by a Noisy Furnace	7	(2)
An American Tale of Sex and Death	9	(4)
Reintroductions	13	(2)
Adolescent Hemlock	15	(2)
In the House of Being	17	(5)
The Cost	22	(1)
Revelation in Pinks and Red	23	(2)
Superstitious Manna	25	(1)
Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art	26	(3)
Windfall	29	(1)
Upon Witnessing My Mother Impossibly Blossom above My Father's Deathbed	30	(5)
Three
Love Poem with Knife and Last Cut Zinnia	35	(3)
Sappho's Fragment 63	38	(2)
Instructor's Comments on the Poem "Eden Sleeping," Circa 1975	40	(2)
How He Answered the Glossy Magazine's Mate-Poaching Survey	42	(2)
Upon Blowing Our Chance to Meet the Poet Laureate, Who's Probably a Nice Guy	44	(2)
Etiquette and Epiphany in the Post-Workshop Men's Room	46	(2)
The Other One	48	(2)
To Bob Marley's Toe	50	(2)
Ghosts	52	(2)
To Bananas	54	(2)
Reliquary	56	(5)
Four
Thinking of Kandinsky while Shaving My Father	61	(2)
Theory & Practice	63	(2)
Valentine's Day Boxing at the Madison County Jail	65	(5)
Found in a Shoe Box Labeled "Keep"	70	(4)
In the Nuclear Age	74	(2)
Upon Freeing the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Beak-Stuck in a Screen Door	76	(2)
To Wheelbarrows	78	(2)
While Writing This Poem, My Horse Jumped the Pasture Fence	80	(2)
These Gifts	82	(2)
Won't You Stand Next to My Fire	84	(2)
Tract	86