Legitimate Dangers : American Poets of the New Century

by Dumanis, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781932511291
• ISBN10: 1932511296
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-31
• Publisher: Sarabande Books

Summary

This groundbreaking anthology offers a broad and representative introduction to some of the most exciting, fresh voices on the contemporary poetry landscape by gathering together generous selections from the work of 85 younger American poets. The poets selected were born after 1960, published their first book within the last 10 years, and have no more than three books published. Some are the recipients of numerousawards, while others, who are making their first appearance, are quickly making significant contributions to twenty-first-century poetry. The poets include Rick Barot, Joshua Beckman, David Berman, Nick Flynn, Matthea Harvey, Terrance Hayes, Major Jackson, James Kimbrell, D.A. Powell, Spencer Reece, Matthew Rohrer, Rebecca Wolff, Kevin Young, Matthew Zapruder, Andrew Zawacki, and many others.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xxi
Introduction	p. xxxi
Many Are Called	p. 3
Eight Elegies	p. 4
Reading Plato	p. 8
Prologue	p. 9
Unworn	p. 10
Psalm (Traherne)	p. 11
Afterword	p. 12
[Final poem for the gently sifting public begins on the streets...]	p. 14
[I like your handsome drugs. Your pleasant...]	p. 16
[The thirst of the crowd. We laid the surfer down...]	p. 16
[The canals. The liquor coming through...]	p. 17
Ode to the Air Traffic Controller	p. 17
Poem to Line My Casket With, Ramona	p. 19
Zombie Sunday (Had We But World Enough and Time)	p. 20
Meditation on The Consolation of Philosophy	p. 21
Sleeping with Artemis	p. 23
Democratic Vistas	p. 25
April 13, 1865	p. 26
Community College in the Rain	p. 27
From His Bed in the Capital City	p. 27
I Love How Your Eyes Close Every Time You Kiss Me	p. 29
Like a Face	p. 30
Anne Boleyn	p. 31
Pavese Said Death Will Come Bearing Your Eyes	p. 32
Just Yesterday	p. 34
All but Lost	p. 35
Groupie	p. 36
Slutty	p. 37
The Northern Sun	p. 38
Apparition	p. 40
Chrysalis	p. 41
Elegant Endings	p. 45
We're Not Going to Malta	p. 46
Perfect City Code	p. 46
How It Begins How It Ends	p. 48
Aesthetics	p. 49
Divorce	p. 49
Hamartia Symbolized by the Stray	p. 49
"Kelly, Ringling Bros. Oldest Elephant, Goes On Rampage"	p. 50
The Spots	p. 51
The Only Yak in Batesville, Virginia	p. 53
The Girls	p. 54
The Term	p. 54
Room 40	p. 55
Transporter	p. 57
Thrillsville	p. 59
The Power Plant	p. 60
In Squire Park with M., Esquire	p. 60
Phantoms of Utopia	p. 61
Slowly, Slowly, Horses	p. 62
Ocean State	p. 64
Persephone (Unplugged)	p. 65
Paysage Moralise	p. 66
Morningside Park	p. 67
My Ravine	p. 68
Vermont	p. 69
Song for a Play	p. 70
Stealing from Your Mother	p. 71
The Elephant	p. 72
Long Goodbye	p. 74
Shelburne Falls	p. 75
Arbor	p. 78
Sweet Reader, Flanneled and Tulled	p. 80
Thirty Years Rising	p. 82
All the Natural Movements of the Soul	p. 83
The Unbosoming	p. 85
If You Are Asked	p. 85
How to Look at Mexican Highways	p. 88
Driven by a Strange Desire	p. 89
Golfers in the Family	p. 90
Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit	p. 93
Three Panels Depending on the Heart	p. 95
The New Intelligence	p. 97
Birdsong from Inside the Egg	p. 98
The War Is Over	p. 100
Our Man	p. 101
Forensics	p. 102
Sticks	p. 104
Atomic Bride	p. 105
Slow Fade to Black	p. 108
Zapruder	p. 109
On Fire	p. 110
The Boxers	p. 112
Intermission	p. 113
Myths of the Disappearance	p. 115
Geburt des Monicakinds	p. 116
Stories from the Tower	p. 116
Childhood's House	p. 119
Miraculous Image	p. 120
Scold's Mask	p. 120
Subway	p. 121
Housefire	p. 123
Swarm	p. 125
Hive	p. 126
Emptying Town	p. 127
Cartoon Physics, part 1	p. 127
Cartoon Physics, part 2	p. 128
Flesh	p. 130
Nocturne	p. 131
The Hands of the Body Without the Body, and Nothing to Hold	p. 132
Colosseum	p. 133
Afterward, There Will Be a Hallway	p. 136
Berlin Series	p. 137
Nostalgia, Cheryl, Is the Best Heroin	p. 138
Saints	p. 139
Analogies	p. 140
The Last Living Castrato	p. 142
Not Body	p. 143
The Wolf	p. 144
Kiss of Judas	p. 144
Abandoned Conversation with the Senses	p. 146
Our Square of Lawn	p. 146
Ideas Go Only So Far	p. 147
Definition of Weather	p. 148
Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form	p. 149
Wind in a Box	p. 151
The Blue Terrance	p. 152
The Elegant Tongue	p. 153
A Postcard from Okemah	p. 154
Talk	p. 156
As Western Culture Declined Without Its Knowing	p. 158
Where Spring Is	p. 160
My Wrist Split Open	p. 161
Corrections	p. 163
My Pieta	p. 163
Zombie	p. 164
The Pyramid	p. 166
Skin	p. 167
Rooms	p. 167
Submarine	p. 168
Explanation	p. 170
Sampler City	p. 171
Hume's Suicide of the External World	p. 172
Comprehension Questions	p. 175
Blunts	p. 177
Euphoria	p. 178
Pest	p. 179
Don Pullen at the Zanzibar Blue Jazz Cafe	p. 180
Poem Beginning with a Line by Frank Lima	p. 182
The New Life	p. 183
Song of the Chinchilla	p. 184
The United States of America	p. 185
The Girl Who Couldn't Be Loved	p. 185
Beggar's Song	p. 187
Kind of Blue	p. 188
Public Radio Plays Eddie Harris	p. 190
Author's Prayer	p. 192
Dancing in Odessa	p. 193
Maestro	p. 194
Orphean Song	p. 195
Mechanics	p. 196
The Gallery	p. 200
Subtraction Song	p. 201
Occupation	p. 204
Monologue for an Onion	p. 205
On Sparrows	p. 206
Empty House	p. 210
Letters to a Vanishing Fiancee	p. 210
Salvation	p. 212
My Psychic	p. 213
And Having Lost Track	p. 216
Porch in Snow	p. 217
Mariana Trench	p. 218
Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes	p. 218
Bad Aliens	p. 222
An Ordinary Evening	p. 224
Gypsy Summer	p. 226
Civilization Day	p. 227
I Am Like a Desert Owl, an Owl Among the Ruins	p. 229
Sympathy and Envy	p. 231
A Dream of Mimesis	p. 232
In Las Vegas	p. 233
Ars Poetica (the idea)	p. 235
Chill Core	p. 235
Glass Heart	p. 236
Cinema Verite	p. 237
First	p. 241
A Condensed History of Beauty	p. 242
On Death	p. 242
On God	p. 243
"[O boss of ashes boss of dust...]"	p. 244
Hello	p. 245
The Babies	p. 245
The Mustache	p. 246
Transylvania, 1919	p. 247
The Experiments Lasted Through the Winter	p. 247
Portrait of a Child	p. 249
Three Bridges	p. 250
After the Shipwreck	p. 251
I Was Buried in Janzoor	p. 254
Growing Up With a Sears Catalog in Benghazi, Libya	p. 255
Echo & Elixir 1	p. 257
Echo & Elixir 2	p. 258
Logic in the House of Sawed-Off Telescopes	p. 260
Lineage	p. 261
Opposites Attack	p. 262
The Archipelago of Kisses	p. 263
Dear America	p. 264
Still Life W/Influences	p. 266
The Wind Domes	p. 267
Persuasion	p. 268
Look	p. 271
With This Change to Indoor Lighting	p. 272
Rendered Dog	p. 273
Marriage Proposal	p. 274
Hearing Music Through Dark Trees	p. 276
Capstone	p. 277
Where Were You	p. 278
Driving Past My Exit	p. 281
The Vandals	p. 282
The Vandals Dying	p. 283
Practicing Their Diffidence, The Vandals	p. 284
[when you touch down upon this earth.little reindeers]	p. 286
[sleek mechanical dart: the syringe noses into the blue vein marking the target of me]	p. 287
[tall and thin and young and lovely the michael with kaposi's sarcoma goes walking]	p. 288
[writing for a young man on the redline train: "to his boy mistress"]	p. 289
[coda & discography]	p. 290
For the Unfortunates	p. 291
The End of the City	p. 291
A Car Has Fallen from a Bridge	p. 292
The Rise of Rome	p. 293
On Finding a Swastika Carved on a Tree in the Hills Above Heidelberg	p. 294
Corruption	p. 296
Scarecrow Eclogue	p. 296
Second Circle	p. 297
Evening with Stars	p. 298
Burial Practice	p. 299
Portofino	p. 301
Autumn Song	p. 301
The Clerk's Tale	p. 302
Strawberry	p. 305
Stupid	p. 306
What Was There to Bring Me to Delight But to Love and Be Loved?	p. 309
a crash of rhinos	p. 310
Childhood Stories	p. 312
from The World at Night	p. 313
My Government	p. 313
We Never Should Have Stopped at Pussy Island	p. 314
More Important Than the Design of Cities Will Be the Design of Their Decay	p. 316
Man-Torpedo-Boat	p. 317
Assembling My Shepherd	p. 318
Never Morocco	p. 319
Big Rig the Baroque Sky	p. 320
At Shedd Aquarium	p. 322
Chanel No. 5	p. 323
Vampire Finch	p. 325
Woodpecker Finch	p. 328
House of Dior	p. 330
The Alphabetizer Speaks	p. 331
First Bookshelf	p. 332
What I Disliked About the Pleistocene Era	p. 333
Your Name on It	p. 335
Epithalament	p. 336
Postfeminism	p. 336
You Love, You Wonder	p. 337
Panopticon	p. 338
Boot Theory	p. 339
A Primer for the Small Weird Loves	p. 340
Saying Your Names	p. 342
Self-Portrait as the Letter Y	p. 346
History	p. 348
Duende	p. 355
localism or t/here	p. 358
December 1, 2002	p. 359
December 4, 2002	p. 361
January 28, 2003	p. 363
One Thousand Bullfrogs Rejoice	p. 366
Meteor	p. 367
Holy Ghost	p. 368
Eohippus	p. 369
Elsewhere	p. 370
First person plural is a house	p. 371
Set for a Southern Gothic	p. 372
Detail From "Set for a Southern Gothic"	p. 374
Dead House Sonnet	p. 376
Trick Noir	p. 376
They Call You Moody	p. 379
Touch Me Not	p. 380
Modern Love	p. 381
Miscegenation	p. 383
Genus Narcissus	p. 384
Countess P-'s Advice for New Girls	p. 384
Native Guard	p. 385
Story for the Mother Tongue	p. 390
Next to Last Prayer	p. 391
Portraits at the Epicenter	p. 394
[Now I promise...]	p. 398
[If it be event...]	p. 398
The Case	p. 399
May	p. 399
Kiss Me Deadly	p. 400
The Miracles of St. Sebastian	p. 402
What Begins Bitterly Becomes Another Love Poem	p. 403
Hotel d'Avignon	p. 404
O Canada!	p. 405
As Hour and Year Collapsed	p. 407
Send New Beasts	p. 409
Narrative Poem	p. 410
Where I Stand with Regard to the Game	p. 410
Italics, Mine	p. 412
Nervous Systems	p. 414
Junkyard	p. 415
[Wind in bare vines...]	p. 418
Relict	p. 418
Coal Age	p. 419
The Fossil Garden	p. 420
Testimony	p. 421
Confession	p. 422
50 Years in the Career of an Aspiring Thug	p. 423
Advice	p. 423
Press Play	p. 425
Sybil	p. 426
Lamb, Willow: An Arch Dolefulness Has Taken Me This Far	p. 428
Amaryllis	p. 431
Voluntary Servitude	p. 432
Fourteen Things We're Allowed to Bring to the Underworld	p. 433
Predictions About a Black Car	p. 434
Naglfar	p. 435
Night Ferry to Naxos 1	p. 436
Night Ferry to Naxos 2	p. 436
Flatlanders	p. 437
Proximity	p. 440
Torn	p. 441
Infidelity	p. 442
Soundtrack	p. 444
The Rushes	p. 447
Negative	p. 449
Song of Smoke	p. 450
Errata	p. 451
Canada	p. 453
School Street	p. 454
Whoever You Are	p. 456
Credo	p. 458
Velocity Among the Ruins of Angel Republic	p. 460
Vertigo	p. 461
[from] Viatica	p. 462
Diary (Underworld)	p. 464
Not Knowing Nijinsky or Diaghilev	p. 465
In Your Version of Heaven I Am Younger	p. 466
Photo Credits	p. 469
Further Reading	p. 471
Acknowledgments	p. 477
Editors' Acknowledgments	p. 489
The Editors	p. 491
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