Tea

by Powell, D. A.

• ISBN13: 9780819563347
• ISBN10: 081956334X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-02-01
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

Tea is a series of poems about survival. "To survive is an astonishing gift," D. A. Powell writes. "The price of that gift is memory." Visually arresting, Tea is an experimental poem-cycle with traditional formal techniques built into its "wild" surface. The first section consists of portraits of young men, friends or former lovers, who have contracted or have died of AIDS. Pushing into the margins of culture as well as of the page, Powell combines all manner of subject and tone to create a work part memory play, part episodic novel, part funny pages -- even part dance. Poems sing from the mouths of actor Sal Mineo, Batman's sidekick Robin, and the little girl from The Exorcist. A fugue for a disco singer, a letter to the poet's dog, an ode to the 1980s and a confession of love to a public toilet vibrate between the comic and the tragic. Like its central metaphor, Tea is gossipy, swirling, steamy, and sober.

Author Biography

D. A. POWELL is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and recipient of a 1997 Paul Engle Fellowship from the James Michener Foundation. He lives in San Francisco. His newest collection is Lunch.

Table of Contents

The Tea on Tea	xi	(4)
Acknowledgments	xv
TEA LEAVES	1	(10)
[to end and to open with a field	3	(1)
[gary asleep in his recliner	4	(1)
[nicholas the ridiculous	5	(1)
[kenny lost in the mineshaft among silver stalactites	6	(1)
[the thicknesses of victor decreased	7	(1)
[dead boys make the sweetest lovers	8	(1)
[tall and thin and young and lovely the michael with kaposi's sarcoma goes walking]	9	(2)
TEA DANCE	11	(14)
[heaven is a discotheque	13	(1)
[now the mirrored rooms seem comic	14	(1)
[the goodbye to nasty habits annual ball	15	(1)
[he'd make my bed jumble and squeak	16	(1)
[this is my last trick	17	(1)
[jackbooted. buttonflyed	18	(1)
[scott at arm's length	19	(1)
[and eventually I would take him back	20	(1)
[between scott's asshole and his mouth I could not say which I preferred	21	(1)
[fifteen and smooth	22	(1)
[he must have been a deejay this one	23	(1)
[your shiny buckle unfastens at last	24	(1)
SPILLING TEA	25	(12)
[how would ed lower himself to sleep with her	27	(1)
[she was not expecting another gentleman caller	28	(1)
[piano strings severed	29	(1)
[untitled]	30	(1)
[a long line of bohunks and hunyaks	31	(1)
[our family was tolerant of even anti-christs	32	(1)
[morning sagged and creaked in bed	33	(1)
[my sister-in-law never uttered his name	34	(1)
[what happened to "significant" out of bed	35	(1)
[who won't praise green	36	(1)
TEA ROOMS	37	(18)
[what direction will you take when the universe collapses	39	(1)
[this little kiddie liked floors	40	(1)
[the last dog of this boyishness is put to sleep	41	(1)
[the daddy purrs	42	(1)
[my neck a toothsome feeding ground	43	(1)
[I wore the green bandanna as often as I could	44	(1)
[these moves were not acquired overnight	45	(1)
[not even wanting to be the glamor puss	46	(1)
[only the cruisy toilets will suffer this rascal	47	(1)
[the city is dying to be stylish	48	(1)
[mannequins from the same lumber	49	(1)
[my stasis must confound you	50	(1)
[rollingstock clatters through town and your cells urge to hop it	51	(1)
[not just that you and I got starry-eyed	52	(1)
[elegy]	53	(1)
READING TEA	55	(13)
[ode]	57	(1)
[the crash divides my life	58	(1)
[divining: where I come from is drought	59	(1)
[intolerable phoenix: the prairie	60	(1)
[the merit of reading tea	61	(1)
[how his body stood against a thicket	62	(1)
[sleek mechanical dart	63	(1)
[my back is not straight	64	(1)
[epithalamion]	65	(2)
[first fugue]	67	(1)
Notes	68