The Red Bird

by McSweeney, Joyelle

• ISBN13: 9780971318908
• ISBN10: 0971318905
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-01
• Publisher: Fence Books

Summary

With the persistent, dappled vision of an ecstatic pragmatist, Joyelle McSweeney sees things as they are through "the modern knothole": "Up on the hill,/ a white tent had just got unsteadily to its feet/ like a foal or a just-foaled cathedral." Eventuality, as it is delicately shaded by the fine and fearless intelligence of these kinesthetic arrangements, coincides with imaginative possibility; the resulting poems are as much mind as place; much galaxy as time-inevitable and correct as only true whimsy can be. "Outside, the web of tenthousandthings;/ inside here, only three: filmstrip of a helicopter's shadow;/ against an Antarctic wall; silkscreen/ of the grand central ceiling. The idealized landscape-/ I want a room in it."

Author Biography

Born in Boston and raised (mostly) in the Philly suburbs, Joyelle McSweeney attended Harvard and Oxford before receiving her MFA from Iowa. She identifies Yeats and the blockbuster art exhibits which toured the Mid-Atlantic in the mid-'nineties as her formative influences. She currently works at the Annals of Otology, Rhinology, and Laryngology in Iowa City, IA.

Table of Contents

Foreword	i
Allen Grossman
Still Life w/Influences	1	(1)
Toy House	2	(1)
Developed Nation	3	(1)
My Brother-in-Law Frank Hunger	4	(1)
The New Island	5	(3)
The Idealized Landscape	8	(2)
Toy Bed	10	(1)
Toy Enterprises	11	(1)
Toy election	12	(1)
Toy Maternity	13	(1)
Developed Nation	14	(1)
Roman	15	(5)
Elba	20	(2)
Elba	22	(2)
Persuasion	24	(3)
Animal Instruction	27	(2)
Premiers	29	(1)
The Premier	30	(1)
The Gray Pony	31	(1)
Assembling the Birds	32	(3)
The Round Table	35	(4)
Interview with a Dog	39	(2)
The Barque of a Million Years	41	(4)
Revelations/Celebrity Cribs	45	(1)
The Mayor's Solioquy	46	(1)
Books of	47	(2)
A Proverb	49	(1)
The Voyage of the Beagle	50	(1)
The Voyage of the Beagle	51	(1)
The Voyage of the Beagle	52	(1)
The Voyage of the Beagle	53	(1)
The Voyage of the Beagle	54	(1)
The Voyage of the Beagle	55	(1)
The Voyage of the Beagle	56	(1)
The Voyage of the Beagle	57	(1)
The Voyage of the Beagle	58	(1)
Stereo	59	(1)
Joy	60	(3)
Afterlives	63