Boneshaker

by Beatty, Jan

• ISBN13: 9780822957799
• ISBN10: 0822957795
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

Summary

In hard-hitting, sophisticated, often lyrical language, Jan Beatty investigates the idea of the body as cultural machine, shelter, mirage, or home. She rescripts the birth scene with girders and industrial pulleys; the womb as inhabited by a young gift architect. Structurally adventurous, the poems in Boneshaker question icons and invoke taboos, connect desire with place and class, walk the tightrope between sex and love.

Table of Contents

Machine Shop of Love	p. 3
Penitentiary	p. 4
My Mother and Aunt Charlotte Talk Disasters at Schmotzer's Village Bakery	p. 6
Going Deep for Jesus	p. 7
Killing Chatty-Cathy	p. 9
Poetry Workshop at the Homeless Shelter	p. 10
Cruising with the Check-out Girls	p. 12
Making baby	p. 14
Certain Things	p. 15
My Father Teaches Me Desire	p. 17
Near the Foundling Home	p. 21
Dead Jones	p. 24
My Father Teaches Me to Dream	p. 25
Who's the President?	p. 26
Mike's Hoagie Hut, Morgantown, West Virginia, 1971	p. 29
Modern Love	p. 30
Louise	p. 31
I'd Give Anything	p. 34
In the Brilliance	p. 36
Aria for the Body	p. 37
I Can Get That Anywhere	p. 41
My Father Teaches Me Solidarity	p. 42
At Buckey's, Sheridan, Wyoming	p. 44
Report from the Skinhouse	p. 45
Drive, She Said	p. 46
Boneshaker	p. 48
My Father Teaches Me Longing	p. 53
Relentless	p. 54
The Waitress Angels Speak to Me in a Vision	p. 55
Dear Mother, Machine,	p. 57
Stepping Over the Body	p. 60
Vanishing	p. 62
Hearing Voices	p. 67
How I Fell in Love in Pittsburgh	p. 69
White Everything, New Mexico	p. 70
Speaking Corvette	p. 71
Crossing Over	p. 73
What's for Dinner?	p. 75
After Therapy, I Dream of Keith Richards and the Failure of Language	p. 78
My Father Teaches Me Light	p. 80
Zen of Tipping	p. 81
The Kill	p. 82
Seizure	p. 84
Cruising the Blue Belt	p. 86
Notes	p. 89
Acknowledgments	p. 91
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