Exceptions And Melancholies: Poems 1986-2006

by Angel, Ralph

• ISBN13: 9781932511420
• ISBN10: 1932511423
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-01
• Publisher: Consortium Book Sales & Dist

Summary

"He brings something ancient and compelling . . . a kind of rare Sephardic wisdom, a brilliance traveling at the speed of Los Angeles light. He is one of America's very best poets. A true visionary."-Tomaz Salamun "Angel's poems are deceptively quiet, deceptively calm. Beneath their carefully constructed surfaces, they are wild, even intimidating. The power of restraint in poetry cannot be overestimated. . . . These poems burn from within."-Carol Muske-Dukes, LA Times With the publication of his award-winning volumes, Anxious Latitudes, Neither World, and Twice Removed, Ralph Angel has won the admiration of readers of contemporary poetry for the extraordinary abstract lyricism of his poems. There is a superb grace, speculative intelligence, and a wry philosophical wisdom to Angel's poetry. There are few poets so accomplished at creating an elegant yet innovative and provocative voice. Now, in Ralph Angel's Exceptions and Melancholies: Poems 1986-"2006, we find ourselves again in the presence of poetry that will move us even closer to a new and renewed promise of the American sublime. As Mark Doty has written, "These are the poems of a casual, down-to-earth philosopher who's been spun around and turned inside out by loss, by the desolation of life in the late [and early] hours of the century. . . . Angel's poems are stamped indelibly with the mark of a unique, shaping imagination, and they're fresh with news of how it feels to live right now. He creates himself and his poems' characters, strange people in a strangely familiar place. We recognize them, of course, as well we might since they are ourselves and the city where they live is ours. Ralph Angel is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Anxious Latitudes; Neither World, which received the 1995 James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets; and Twice Removed; as well as a translation of Federico Garcia Lorca's Poem of the Deep Song. Angel's poems have appeared in scores of magazines and anthologies, both here and abroad, and recent literary awards include a gift from the Elgin Cox Trust, a Pushcart Prize, the 2003 Willis Barnstone Poetry Translation Prize, a Fulbright Foundation fellowship, and the Bess Hokin Award of the Modern Poetry Association. Mr. Angel is the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Redlands, and a member of the MFA Program in Writing faculty at Vermont College. Originally from Seattle, he lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	11	(6)
New Poems
With Care	17	(1)
The Unveiling	18	(1)
Skittering	19	(2)
Vertigo	21	(1)
Nobody's Dead There	22	(2)
First Impressions	24	(1)
The Heart of Things	25	(2)
Exceptions and Melancholies	27	(2)
Respite	29	(1)
Inside Out	30	(2)
Part I: Acknowledgment	32	(2)
Soft and Pretty	34	(1)
Blackouts	35	(1)
The Coast	36	(2)
Untitled	38	(1)
Playing Monster	39	(2)
Phosphorescence	41	(2)
Steamed Fish and Vegetables	43	(2)
Sampling	45	(1)
Who Knew	46	(2)
Brighten	48	(2)
Sometimes an Image	50	(1)
a picture of it	51	(4)
from Anxious Latitudes
History	55	(3)
You Are the Place You Cannot Move	58	(2)
Man in a Window	60	(2)
Committing Sideways	62	(2)
Falling Behind	64	(2)
Transient News	66	(2)
Fragile Hardware	68	(1)
Between Two Tracks	69	(2)
Recurring Motel	71	(1)
By Degrees	72	(1)
Untitled	73	(2)
Earl Never Loses	75	(2)
Not to Reach Great Heights, But to Stay Out of Great Valleys	77	(2)
Back Down	79	(2)
Cyclone Off the Coast	81	(2)
Ground Glass	83	(2)
Secretive, But Honest	85	(2)
City Country	87	(2)
Anxious Latitudes	89	(4)
from Neither World
Long Shadows, Many Footsteps	93	(2)
Subliminal Birds	95	(1)
Unspeakable	96	(2)
The River Has No Hair to Hold Onto	98	(2)
The Privilege of Silence	100	(2)
Leaving One	102	(2)
In Every Direction	104	(2)
Breaking and Entering	106	(2)
At the Seams	108	(1)
Veils of Prayer	109	(2)
Evolving Similarities	111	(3)
Love's That Simple	114	(2)
At Your Convenience	116	(2)
Headlights Trail Away	118	(2)
Among Fields of Shocked Corn	120	(2)
A Rat in the Room	122	(3)
Breaking Rhythm	125	(2)
Untitled	127	(2)
Getting Honest	129	(1)
And the Grass Did. Grow	130	(2)
The Blessed	132	(1)
Shadow Play	133	(4)
from Twice Removed
Twice Removed	137	(2)
Months Later	139	(1)
The Nothing That Is	140	(1)
The Local Language	141	(1)
Late for Work	142	(2)
Breathing Out	144	(2)
Even Because	146	(2)
Untitled	148	(2)
Untitled	150	(1)
I Like Animals	151	(1)
Half Circle	152	(2)
It Takes a While to Disappear	154	(1)
Decalogue	155	(5)
Twilight	160	(1)
Interior Landscape	161	(1)
Alpine Wedding	162	(2)
Between Murmur and Glare	164	(2)
A Waltz for Debbie	166	(1)
The Vigil	167	(1)
And So Asks	168	(2)
Tidy	170	(2)
This	172	(1)
From the Balcony	173	(2)
The Author	175