Desire in L. A.

by Ronk, Martha

• ISBN13: 9780820311760
• ISBN10: 0820311766
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1990-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

Desire in L.A.confronts limitless longing in a city that is itself without limits. In these poems, the object of desire is decidedly missing, whether that object be love or beauty or the past.Shifting even within a single poem, and certainly from section to section, the objects of desire in Martha Ronk's poetry become as elusive as the unnamed Marilyn Monroe--"that image of another's skirts"--of the title poem, or the moment captured in "A photograph as good as a picture":"He leans forward with such / fervor, yet isn't young and something / decidedly is happening, even / to the beefy fellow in his white / short-sleeved shirt. A photograph-- / oh, perhaps not the same as a / Manet, but it is Auden, and / for whatever reason he stares at / the square flesh neckline / of her dress. He is forward / in his chair, rumpled about / the collar and everyone is wearing / black and white. It is the formal / occasion of how much he cares / to be there, Venice, 1951 / and how much I care to see him / no matter what for, longing / like that."Moving from thwarted examples of family and place to language and its corruptions, from classical Japanese love poems to failed love in the southwestern desert, from emotionality to artifice, the book ends with a series focused on the slipperiness of all categories.

Author Biography

Martha Ronk is the author of seven books of poetry, including Eyetrouble and Desire in L. A. (both Georgia). She is the Irma and Jay Price Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

The Seitz Theater
Door to door	3	(2)
The Seitz Theater	5	(2)
Vermont	7	(1)
Sanibel Island	8	(1)
Landmarks	9	(1)
July 4	10	(1)
Mothlike	11	(1)
Spanish moss in America	12	(2)
John Henry	14	(2)
Dark tonight	16	(1)
Nishijin	17	(1)
Italy wins at world soccer	18	(3)
Rhetoric
Rhetoric no. 1	21	(1)
Rhetoric no. 2	22	(1)
Rhetoric no. 3	23	(1)
Rhetoric no. 4	24	(1)
Rhetoric no. 5	25	(1)
Rhetoric no. 6	26	(1)
Rhetoric no. 7	27	(1)
Rhetoric no. 8	28	(1)
Epigrams	29	(6)
Exhibitions
An exhibition of Gorky	35	(1)
Still life with brass bowl	36	(1)
A photograph as good as a picture	37	(1)
Looking at a reproduction of Ladies of the Village in T. J. Clark, a letter	38	(2)
The painting for my mother	40	(1)
Still life for my mother	41	(1)
The winter before last	42	(1)
Like a photograph	43	(1)
Corot	44	(1)
Drawings by Seurat	45	(1)
Still life: iconography	46	(1)
Distortions	47	(1)
Reading Sappho	48	(1)
Elgin Marbles	49	(1)
Lady Emma Hamilton as La Baccante	50	(2)
Still life: to name, to want	52	(1)
One needs	53	(1)
The object of desire	54	(15)
Tale of Genji poems	57	(12)
Desire: the desert
Desire in L.A.	69	(1)
Photographs	70	(1)
Walker Evans
The desert as the idea of what's missing	71	(1)
The painted desert	72	(1)
Inyokern	73	(1)
It's a desert still	74	(1)
Lone Pine, CA	75	(1)
Crossings	76	(1)
Remodelling	77	(1)
A celebration of love and the new year	78	(1)
Sort of a country western	79	(1)
Ironic dialogue	80	(1)
Unlike the movies, life is	81	(1)
Domestic surrealism 1-6	82