Isn't It Romantic

by Lauer, Brett Fletcher

• ISBN13: 9780974635316
• ISBN10: 0974635316
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-11-15
• Publisher: Wave Books

Summary

Written by 100 American poets, Isn't It Romantic offers an engaging look at how contemporary poets respond afresh to the well-trammeled territory of the love poem. Award-winning poets from across the country lend their voices to this important document of contemporary poetry. The book also features a bonus full-length audio CD of love songs by independent recording artists. Anthology Contributors include: Karen Volkman, Joe Wenderoth, Eleni Sikelianos, Juliana Spahr, Brenda Shaughnessy, Matthew Rohrer, Claudia Rankine, D.A. Powell, Hoa Nguyen, Noelle Kocot, Lisa Jarnot, Kevin Young, Brian Henry, Christine Hume, Matthea Harvey, Arielle Greenberg, Thalia Field, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Timothy Donnelly, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Stephen Burt, Joshua Beckman, and more. Contributors to the audio CD include: David Berman, Richard Buckner, Vic Chesnutt, Ida, Doug Martsch, Mark Mulcahy, Megan Reiley, Jenny Toomey and more. Editor Brett Fletcher Lauer is the poetry in motion director at the Poetry Society of America and poetry editor of CROWD Magazine. He is the co-editor of Poetry In Motion from Coast to Coast (W. W. Norton, 2002) and his poems have appeared in BOMB, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. Editor Aimee Kelley is the editor and publisher of CROWD Magazine. She received her BA in English from UC Berkeley and her MFA from the New School for Social Research. She has worked at non-profit organizations such as the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses and the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Spinning Jenny, 811 Books and elsewhere. Charles Simic (Introduction) is the author of many books of poems, including The World Doesn't End, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 17
from Your time has come	p. 21
Poem to line my casket with, Ramona	p. 22
Classic water	p. 24
The various multitudes contained by the loves of my love	p. 26
The history of the human body	p. 27
By the skin of our luck	p. 28
The endowment becoming less an institution	p. 29
After Sappho	p. 30
The only yak in Batesville, Virginia	p. 31
A sudden rain in the green mountains	p. 32
Targets and flowers (begun with lines from Breton)	p. 34
Untitled	p. 35
Good night, star	p. 36
Trans-relational love poem	p. 37
Self portrait in horse hair wig	p. 39
Field guide to western intimacy	p. 40
Once as thoth beside the sea	p. 41
Driven by a strange desire	p. 42
Isn't it romantic?	p. 44
An error of the hydrographers	p. 45
Reading postures 3	p. 46
Atomic bride	p. 47
The king with his queen	p. 50
The compass room : east	p. 51
Workers (attendants)	p. 53
On the evening of a wedding	p. 54
It was raining in delft	p. 55
Letters from camp	p. 56
Species of audibles	p. 58
In defense of our overgrown garden	p. 59
from The book of funnels	p. 60
Clarinet	p. 61
Interview with a piece of smoke	p. 62
Look around	p. 64
Animal house shape of God	p. 65
Sway	p. 66
Urban renewal xii	p. 67
They loved these things too	p. 68
Pyramus & thisbe	p. 69
A wedding	p. 70
Apology	p. 71
Bicycle poem	p. 72
The sore throat	p. 73
Why I look at girls	p. 75
Cho-Fu-Sa	p. 77
In Las Vegas	p. 79
Enough to say	p. 81
The piano	p. 82
Body cavity	p. 83
Alba : Aberdeen	p. 85
Confessions	p. 86
Eros, Ethos, economuos	p. 89
Hunting for cherubs	p. 90
from The blaze of the Poui	p. 91
Eclipsed	p. 93
Manhattan valley	p. 94
The skull ring	p. 95
Just dump me on the palace steps	p. 96
From a distance I can see	p. 97
Subway in March, 5:45 p.m	p. 98
Third maisie poem	p. 100
[Calmly grass becomes a wave]	p. 101
Wild is the wind	p. 102
Ii:Ii	p. 103
The saint's first wife said	p. 104
Woe	p. 105
[First fugue]	p. 106
Ars poetica	p. 107
Moveable figures	p. 108
from Testimonial	p. 110
Hotel lullaby	p. 111
Vow II	p. 112
Away from you the seafloor's longitudinal	p. 113
Snow	p. 114
Credo	p. 115
Love, with trees and lightning	p. 116
Dear	p. 118
Me in paradise	p. 119
Haiku	p. 121
Also love you	p. 123
Union Square	p. 125
Romanticism	p. 128
Heaven	p. 131
Write like one walks	p. 132
Love as fear of love in laughter	p. 133
When the time comes	p. 134
Prayer #3	p. 136
from Spar	p. 137
Lover	p. 138
Spontaneous monument	p. 139
from A room to share	p. 141
January 11, 1997	p. 142
Loved one	p. 143
Without pity	p. 145
Flame on	p. 146
Venice, unaccompanied	p. 147
Litany	p. 149
Ten questions for Mona	p. 153
Vertigo	p. 155
A kind of catastrophe	p. 157
Introduction to the CD by Matthew Zapruder	p. 181
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.