Setting the World in Order

by Campbell, Rick

• ISBN13: 9780896724471
• ISBN10: 0896724476
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Texas Tech Univ Pr

Summary

Rick Campbell's journey from the banks of the Ohio to the beaches of Florida is a rhapsody, and the music he makes in ordering his world takes us with him, to the headwaters of a new river. "Rick Campbell's poems leave some sweet dirt under your fingernails-- proof of hard, honest work when the longing of small-town America is not enough. Setting the World in Order eloquently plots our geographically impossible trajectories. On the way, Campbell can lay down a narrative as spacious as the range of a blues harmonica, every gritty riff dissolving into compassion."--Dionisio D. Martinez "Rick Campbell's poems move with grace and muscle and music from the Catholic working class of his youth, its factories and foundries, along the rivers of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, and through the lives of the flesh-and-blood characters of contemporary America. Part prayer, part song, part gritty story, they always dance with meaning and significance; they always wholly embrace the idea of individual presence in a terrible, beautiful world."--Frank X. Gaspar From Harmonica Lesson Go with the rhythm till you can't get off the track. Like this. Tight-belly staccato, hands cutting and freeing the air, one hard-held bottom line. Play between trains. Keep the wheels in mind. Catch the next one and play all night. In the morning try the whistle. You've earned it. It should sound like Kansas. Setting the World in Order is the tenth winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry, selected by Robert Fink of Hardin-Simmons University, editor of the Walt McDonald First-Book Series.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xv
I
Legend	3	(1)
The Poem in the River	4	(5)
Ohio River Sunday	9	(2)
Gasoline	11	(1)
The Wall	12	(1)
Late November, the Coming of Winter at State Street Elementary School	13	(2)
Creeley Cursing in Church	15	(1)
The Spring in Tevebaugh Hollow	16	(1)
Caterpillars	17	(1)
The Candles at Margaret Mary Catholic Church	18	(2)
How the Streets in Front of Kaufmann's Department Store Tell Me I Am Home	20	(5)
II
Setting Pins, 1966	25	(1)
The History of Steel	26	(2)
Morrison's, 1968	28	(1)
Hanging Tobacco	29	(2)
Seed Harvest, Gilroy, California	31	(2)
For the Old Men at the Grindstone Factory	33	(2)
Body Song, Vietnam	35	(2)
Harmonica Lesson	37	(1)
Well Done	38	(3)
III
Discourse	41	(3)
Seashell Salesman	44	(1)
Meditation on Today's Limit of Pleasure	45	(1)
Pensacola Street Sunrise	46	(1)
Letter to Kathy from a Frigate at Sea	47	(2)
To Jennifer, Thinking of Li Po	49	(1)
The Geography of Desire	50	(5)
IV
Leaving Home, Pittsburgh 1966	55	(1)
Juno Beach and the Sea Turtle	56	(2)
Horseshoe Crabs Mating at Carrabelle Beach	58	(1)
Orange Nights, Cold Stars	59	(2)
Fishing the Encampment	61	(1)
The Breathers, St. Mark's Lighthouse	62	(2)
Confluence	64	(1)
Even the Ohio Can Change	65	(1)
Setting the World in Order	66	(3)
V
Bamboo	69	(1)
A Walk in the Woods	70	(1)
On Missing the First Step on the Moon	71	(2)
Angels Flying You Home	73	(2)
The Drowned Son	75	(1)
On the Water of My Mistakes	76	(1)
Proving Lake Okeechobee	77	(2)
Trying to Get Pregnant, Flying to Iowa	79	(1)
Long Distance Call 3/1995	80	(1)
A Thousand Miles from Della Rose	81