Where X Marks the Spot

by Zavatsky, Bill

• ISBN13: 9781931236683
• ISBN10: 1931236682
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-31
• Publisher: Hanging Loose Pr

Summary

Poetry. "'Who touches this book, touches a man,' said Whitman, and that is certainly the case with this astounding volume by Bill Zavatsky, who generously imparts his whole life and soul in these vital, hilarious, frank, eloquent, deeply satisfying works. Poet of the white working class, of jazz gigs and strip clubs, marriage, screw-ups and divorce, of obstinately teaching kids to write, chronicler of city life on the fly, bard of the splendors and miseries of the dating scene, Zavatsky risks all, holds nothing back. These remarkable poems have plenty of heart, muscle and mind: they refuse easy bondings, they test the limits of their own compassion. So much contemporary poetry seems tame, obscure or overly fussy compared to the robust humanity, independence and (finally, yes) wisdom of this inimitable voice" --Phillip Lopate.

Table of Contents

104 Bus Uptown	11	(2)
Woman Walking	13	(1)
Evita	14	(2)
Chantilly	16	(1)
On the Rainbow	17	(2)
New Year's Eve 1989	19	(3)
Reading Roque Dalton, Smoking a Nicaraguan Cigar	22	(6)
Skeletons	28	(1)
Bald	29	(3)
Sleep	32	(3)
Class Walk with Notebooks After Storm	35	(7)
Morphology of Goodbye	42	(1)
Three Flower Garden Poems	43	(6)
Not Me Any More	49	(1)
Television	50	(1)
Late Night	51	(2)
The Woman Who Danced and Took Off Her Clothes, The Woman Who Sang and Cried	53	(6)
For Steve Royal	59	(3)
Richard Manuel Singing "Lonesome Suzie"	62	(2)
Live at the Village Vanguard	64	(3)
Elegy (For Bill Evans, 1929-1980)	67	(1)
My Uncle at the Wake	68	(5)
Imaginary Brother	73	(1)
Up in Grandma's Room	74	(3)
Baseball	77	(2)
Walker Evans in Bridgeport	79	(2)
My Father's Watch	81	(2)
My Father in the Dream	83	(1)
Beetle	84	(8)
Failure	92	(2)
Poem in Favor of the War	94	(2)
Marge	96	(2)
Her Perfume	98	(2)
Poem ("You know what happens")	100	(2)
"You Don't Know What Love Is"	102	(2)
Where X Marks the Spot	104	(3)
Little Poem	107	(1)
Any Morning	108