Places in Mind

by Brosman, Catharine Savage

• ISBN13: 9780807125472
• ISBN10: 0807125474
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-04-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Summary

"On this familiar planet all is strange, " writes Catharine Savage Brosman, and with that she takes her reader on an eye- and mind-opening journey that starts, cocktail in hand, at the Columns Hotel veranda on New Orleans's St. Charles Avenue and flies to such memorable and varied sites as the rainy bank of London's Thames, an English greengrocer's winter produce bin, an abbey on the Norman plain, an island under palms where "the flames of bougainvillaea and the hibiscus burn magenta, " and across the Utah line. "Remember, though, " the poet warns, "a manual for tourists this is not -- /adventures in the mind are what you've got."

And the mind's eye that refracts these vivid places is unmistakably Brosman's, richly allusive, deeply meditative, and ranging widely. In language always controlled and precise, Places in Mind offers readers "on this hurtling missile" of modern pace "days of sweet, slow syrup, " "a silken, seamless afternoon." Both cerebral and sensuous, Brosman's poems cause time, thought, and subject to luster and converge.

Author Biography

Catharine Savage Brosman is currently professor emerita at Tulane University.

Table of Contents

To the Reader	1	(2)
At ``The Columns''	3	(2)
Composition in Midair	5	(1)
Walking the Thames	6	(2)
Faces	8	(2)
In Southwark Cathedral	10	(2)
Soho at Night	12	(2)
Rhubarb	14	(1)
Brussels Sprouts	15	(1)
Snow Deer	16	(2)
Yellow Tulips	18	(1)
The Giddings	19	(2)
Ruskin at Brantwood	21	(3)
On The Solent	24	(1)
Cerisy-la-Salle	25	(2)
In the Abbaye d'Ardenne	27	(1)
Umbrellas on the Boulevard Saint-Germain	28	(2)
Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges	30	(2)
Le Tombeau de Ravel	32	(1)
In the Piaristenkirche	33	(1)
Mas El Solanot	34	(1)
Under Palms	35	(1)
Report from New Orleans: Saturday Night	36	(2)
The River	38	(1)
Crepe Myrtles	39	(1)
The Jesus of Magazine Street	40	(2)
Exultate	42	(1)
Lunch with Pierre	43	(2)
Oranges	45	(1)
Olives	46	(2)
Crab Cakes	48	(1)
Grapes	49	(2)
Ars longa, vita brevis	51	(2)
The Chariot	53	(1)
Atchafalaya Swamp	54	(1)
The Egret	55	(1)
In the Gila Lands	56	(1)
For the Mogollon	57	(1)
Near Four Corners	58	(1)
Kokopelli	59	(1)
The Shepherd's Wagon	60	(1)
At Windwhistle Rock	61	(1)
Two Ways toward Hovenweep	62	(2)
Moon over Hovenweep	64	(1)
Kayenta	65	(1)
Kiva	66	(2)
Cottonwoods	68	(2)
The Watchtower	70