Burnt Island Poems

by NURKSE, D.

• ISBN13: 9780375710803
• ISBN10: 0375710809
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-16
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

D. Nurkse'sBurnt Islandexplores tragedy both grand and intimate, in city and country, in our own troubled moment and across the greater scope of geological time. Arranged in three "suites" of lucid, often heart-wrenching verse, the book begins with a city under siege, in a group of poems that becomes a subtle homage to New York after 9/11a metaphorical "burnt island," where diggers doze on their shovels, citizens contribute bottles of water, M&M's, and casseroles to recovery efforts, and survivors, mesmerized by the photos of the missing, compare them "scar by scar with the faces of the living." Nurkse then takes up the journey of a couple starting again in nature at a specific place called Burnt Island, where the elements instruct them, seeming to mirror their conflicts and strife. Finally, in a charming and profound series of poems centered on marine ecology, he finds the infinite in the infinitesimally small, and offers us, in sparkling, mysterious verses, the strange comfort that comes with observing the life of the ocean. we are like you because we are born by the billions and float into the open ocean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . we live another second or much less, less than a blink, until the code comes to know itself and the mind dreams another mind that will survive it there, in the bright curtain of spray. (from "The Granite Coast") From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

D. Nurkse is the author of eight books of poetry. He has received the Whiting Writers’ Award, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, two grants from the New York State Foundation for the Arts, and other awards. He has also written widely on human rights.


D. Nurkse’s The Fall is available in Knopf paperback.


From the Hardcover edition.

Table of Contents

The Reunification Center
My Father's Closet	3	(2)
Night Flight	5	(1)
Saint Luke	6	(2)
A Puzzle at Saint Luke	8	(1)
Two Nights in the Men's Shelter	9	(2)
4:00 A.M.	11	(2)
A Walk in Giovanna's Park	13	(2)
The Ring	15	(2)
The Last Judgment	17	(2)
The Evacuation Corridor	19	(2)
Ruth	21	(2)
October Rendezvous	23	(2)
The Civilian Casualties	25	(2)
Searchers	27	(1)
The Reunification Center	28	(3)
Separation at Burnt Island
A Hike to Little Falls	31	(2)
Germaine River	33	(1)
Herkimer	34	(3)
North of Althea	37	(2)
Picnic at Opposite Island	39	(2)
Cape Ann	41	(2)
Home	43	(2)
War on the Ants	45	(1)
Magnet Bay	46	(2)
The Marriage in Canaan	48	(2)
Burnt Island	50	(2)
Origins of Desire	52	(3)
Space Marriage	55	(3)
The Dark Universe	58	(2)
Marriage in a Rented House	60	(2)
Separation at Burnt Island	62	(5)
Defenses of the Ocean
Diaspore	67	(1)
Nine Crows	68	(3)
Fringillidae	71	(2)
Six Red Spiders in the Elm at High Falls	73	(1)
Hymenoptera: The Ants	74	(4)
The River Monarchs	78	(1)
Tardigrades	79	(2)
Eel Migration	81	(1)
Five Marine Solitudes	82	(3)
Brittle Star	85	(2)
Defenses of the Ocean	87	(6)
The Pressure Zone	93	(2)
The Little Sea	95	(3)
The Many-Eyed Nemerteans	98	(2)
Leuresthes Tenuis	100	(2)
Pelagos	102	(2)
Mysticeti	104	(1)
Cetacea	105	(1)
The Granite Coast	106	(5)
Notes	111	(2)
Acknowledgments	113