Dark Would

by Waldner, Liz

• ISBN13: 9780820323916
• ISBN10: 0820323918
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

A philosophical, tough, and often funny inquiry into twenty-first-century selfhood, Liz Waldner's new collection of poems takes shape in the shadow of Dante's "dark wood."Dark Would (the missing person)is quirky. It's audaciously American, out of the Dickinson house. Waldner uses short, quick syntactical units that swerve rather than build up an architecture of ideas through sequential juxtaposition. She also has, like Dickinson, a canny, carnal, specifying diction. Her poems are sonorous, sly, and sexy. They are political in their address of gender through reference to pop songs, poems, and analyses of personal experiences. The resulting wry permutations of will and desire alternately leaf and hew an American "dark wood." The pages and paths turn to and through the kinds of lostness and foundness to which rootlessness gives rise.

Author Biography

Liz Waldner is the award-winning author of several books of poetry, including Homing Devices; Self and Simulacra, winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award; A Point Is That Which Has No Part, winner of the James Laughlin Award and the Iowa Poetry Prize; and Etym(bi)ology (forthcoming). She lives in Seattle.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Where There's A Will (Away)	xiii
i. Various Ways of Questioning about the Thing
A/ppeal A/pple A/dam A/dream	3	(1)
Washed Clean By The Blood	4	(1)
Being And Seeming, In Public	5	(2)
Forms Of A(d)Dress	7	(1)
Deliverance	8	(2)
Primer	10	(2)
Interpretation	12	(1)
I.D.	13	(1)
Looks Are Everything	14	(2)
Reins, Annals	16	(1)
O Suzanna	17	(1)
Noah Takes Five	18	(1)
Memorandum Of Understanding And Plea	19	(1)
The Model	20	(1)
Gretel Insomne & Insondable	21	(1)
Diptych: Portrait Of Self As Saint Anthony With Visitation	22	(2)
Saint Jerome
Ho, The Isle Of Lesbos	24	(1)
The Nonne Priest's Tale	25	(2)
Dr. Denouement	27	(2)
Self Portrait As Platter On Wall	29	(1)
Shrimpy Girl Talk TypoParenthetical)	30	(2)
Portrait Of Self As Potted Plant	32	(1)
The Shrimpy Girl Talk	33	(8)
ii. The Thing as the Bearer of Properties
The Gift Of Time	41	(1)
Imprimatur	42	(1)
Automat	43	(1)
Grape Nuts	44	(1)
Another Ghost And Where She Came From (stage(f) right)	45	(2)
Role-Call	47	(1)
A Particularly Holey Ghost	48	(2)
MoreSkin	50	(3)
Dark Would/To Let/An Era	53	(1)
Os/Tensorium	54	(3)
A History Of Dust	57	(2)
A History Of Divinity	59	(2)
Projector: A Lover's Lament	61	(1)
Twin Hymns	62	(2)
Oars	64	(5)
iii. The Everyday and Scientific Experiences of the Thing
Bagging It	69	(2)
Orpheus Under The Table	71	(3)
Grow, Little (go worm)	74	(1)
A Closer Walk With Thee	75	(2)
Wood (First Daughter)	77	(1)
Attendance	78	(1)
After Dinner Deserter	79	(1)
Roadside Redaction	80	(1)
Premiere Lecon	81	(3)
The Path Leading From Little To Much	84	(2)
Dux And Comes: Saving The Appearances And All Fall Down	86	(2)
Black Hat Drownded Piece	88	(1)
A Sign's A Sign	89	(2)
Homologum	91	(1)
Censer/Censure	92	(1)
No Count: Master Of The Starry Wheels	93	(1)
Noon OF Green Water	94	(2)
Exponential Episcopy, If Not Episcopation	96	(1)
Some Examples Of Relational Dynamics	97	(2)
Notes	99