The Light in Our Houses

by Maginnes, Al

• ISBN13: 9780807126226
• ISBN10: 0807126225
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Summary

Remarkable for their dark, sharp wit, their stylistic unity, and their combination of sweetness and risk, the poems in The Light in Our Houses probe the intersection of public and private history, and visit the way stories are told: "what we have named history / was once only the braided rivers / of people's lives, currents that brimmed / fast and dangerous, then emptied / into the wide blank spill of ocean". Voicing a disdain for conclusions -- "the gaudy clothes we wrap narrative in" -- Al Maginnes writes poems that carry the weight of parables.

Betty Adcock, who selected The Light in Our Houses from a field of more than five hundred entries, writes: "This book dares to forgo the heavy-handed irony and satiric wink that are so often the chief characteristics of newer poetry.... Al Maginnes can be dark indeed, but his gaze is finally steady and straight ahead. He is aware, awake, amazed, and alive -- all the things we want from a poet -- and in language that ultimately blesses with the old lyric joy".

Author Biography

Al Maginnes is the author of Taking Up Our Daily Tools. His poems have also appeared in Poetry, The New England Review, The Georgia Review, The Antioch Review, and other journals. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina

Table of Contents

PART ONE
The Marriage of Clothes	11	(2)
The Names of History	13	(1)
Punishment	14	(2)
The Challenge	16	(2)
Orphan Trains	18	(2)
Crossroads	20	(2)
Elegy With Clifford Brown Playing Trumpet	22	(2)
Completion	24	(1)
Between Tunes	25	(1)
The Currency of Where We've Been	26	(2)
Dancing Alone	28	(3)
PART TWO
The Lost Child	31	(2)
The Goat Man	33	(2)
Invisible Stars	35	(2)
Chasing Johnny Armstrong	37	(4)
July	41	(2)
Crop Dusters	43	(2)
The Room Below the River	45	(4)
PART THREE
Renovation	49	(2)
Wild Dogs	51	(2)
Ghost Fleet	53	(2)
Winter Ocean: Immersion	55	(2)
Shades	57	(4)
PART FOUR
Calling It Home	61	(1)
Lent	62	(2)
Practicing Love	64	(1)
Fireworks	65	(2)
What We Will Not Drown In	67	(1)
After Weather	68	(1)
The Other Side of Sleep	69	(1)
The Language of Birds	70	(2)
Happy Endings	72