Twigs & Knucklebones

by Lindsay, Sarah

• ISBN13: 9781556591648
• ISBN10: 1556591640
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-10-01
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Pr

Summary

"Sarah Lindsay is blessed with the sort of X-ray vision a philosopher would kill for."-The New York Times Book ReviewQuirky, macabre, vivid, and fascinating, Sarah Lindsay's poetry in Twigs and Knucklebones melds science and art with astonishing facts that might just be true: spadefoot toads singing till their throats bleed, an explorer tumbling into an Antarctic crevasse and swinging from his tether like a pendulum.Many of Lindsay's poems occur in extremis, and the situations are often severe and surreal: the futuristic "Valhalla Burn Unit on the Moon Callisto" or a bog person discovered in Eske's Field. These characters often span-in the space of a poem-various times, cultures, and contexts. Lindsay also creates her own fictional kingdom and peoples it with outlandish characters, including jerboas, megalomaniac archaeologists, an adjunct professor, goatherds, farmers, and the god Nummis, who is depicted with a "hawk on his head, fish in one hand, horned ibex at either side."We prod and whisk and deduce what we can from marks in clay, from the trace of a wall. But the way the king tossed and caught his adoring daughters, the foolish songs he improvised for his wife, and his furry voice- these have been safely forgotten.Sarah Lindsay is the author of two previous books of poems. Her debut volume was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

Table of Contents

The Poetry of Kenneth Rexroth
Saint John	p. 5
"In that hour I have seen"	p. 5
"I pass your home in a slow vermilion dawn"	p. 6
"The minute fingers of a tiny wind"	p. 6
"The absorbent glimmer of the night"	p. 7
"I do not remember the number"	p. 8
You fail an appointment	p. 8
"Someone has cast an unwary match"	p. 8
"All is gone now"	p. 9
"There shall come faint light"	p. 9
"The unpeopled, conventional rose-garden"	p. 10
"November has hung the locust"	p. 11
"Et pour eux seuls, les paradis chantent encore"	p. 11
To another	p. 11
"Speak not, let no word break"	p. 12
"The fragrance of the teapot"	p. 12
Mississippi River	p. 13
"Such was our garden"	p. 13
Prufrock in Wonderland	p. 15
Chicago Cabaret	p. 15
Old Street	p. 16
Requiem	p. 16
Entrance	p. 16
"You did not know she was eternal? There"	p. 17
Portrait of a Lady	p. 17
Noretorp-Noretsyh	p. 18
Untitled	p. 19
140 Syllables	p. 21
The Working Day	p. 21
Untitled, 6 September 1969	p. 22
The Homestead Called Damascus	p. 25
In the Memory of Andree Rexroth	p. 63
The Thin Edge of Your Pride	p. 66
Phronesis	p. 72
The Place	p. 80
Confusion	p. 82
Fundamental Disagreement with Two Contemporaries	p. 83
The Sufficient	p. 90
Into the Shandy Westerness	p. 92
Memorandum	p. 95
Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell	p. 96
The Crisis	p. 98
Okeanos and the Golden Sickle	p. 105
When You Asked for It	p. 105
A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy	p. 117
From the Paris Commune to the Kronstadt Rebellion	p. 143
At Lake Desolation	p. 144
Gentlemen, I Address You Publicly	p. 145
Hiking on the Coast Range	p. 146
A Letter to Wystan Hugh Auden	p. 147
Requiem for the Spanish Dead	p. 148
On What Planet	p. 149
The Motto on the Sundial	p. 150
Climbing Milestone Mountain, August 22, 1937	p. 151
The New Year	p. 153
A Very Early Morning Exercise	p. 153
Another Early Morning Exercise	p. 154
Autumn in California	p. 156
New Objectives, New Cadres	p. 157
August 22, 1939	p. 159
North Palisade, the End of September, 1939	p. 162
Toward an Organic Philosophy	p. 163
A Letter to Yvor Winters	p. 167
An Equation for Marie	p. 168
Songs for Marie's Lutebook	p. 169
Gic to Har	p. 171
Falling Leaves and Early Snow	p. 172
The Apple Garths of Avalon	p. 173
The Heart Unbroken and the Courage Free	p. 175
Organon	p. 176
Dative Haruspices	p. 181
Value in Mountains	p. 183
Easy Lessons in Geophagy	p. 186
A Lesson in Geography	p. 189
Northampton, 1922-San Francisco, 1939	p. 193
Ice Shall Cover Nineveh	p. 193
When We with Sappho	p. 205
Runaway	p. 208
Lute Music	p. 209
Floating	p. 210
Another Spring	p. 211
Night Below Zero	p. 211
The Advantages of Learning	p. 212
Habeas Corpus	p. 212
Pliny - IX, XXXVI - Lampridius - XXIX	p. 213
Harmodius and Aristogeiton	p. 214
Inversely, as the Square of Their Distances Apart	p. 214
Vitamins and Roughage	p. 216
Between Two Wars	p. 216
Gas or Novocain	p. 217
It Rolls On	p. 218
Delia Rexroth	p. 219
Another One	p. 219
Andree Rexroth	p. 220
Precession of the Equinoxes	p. 220
Again at Waldheim	p. 221
Strength through Joy	p. 222
Still on Water	p. 223
Un Bel Di Vedremo	p. 224
Adonis in Winter	p. 225
Adonis in Summer	p. 226
Wednesday of Holy Week, 1940	p. 227
Incarnation	p. 228
We Come Back	p. 229
Martial - XII, LII	p. 230
Theory of Numbers	p. 230
Andree Rexroth	p. 232
Horny Dilemma	p. 233
Incense	p. 233
A Neoclassicist	p. 233
Past and Future Turn About	p. 234
The Phoenix and the Tortoise (1940-1944)	p. 239
Between Myself and Death	p. 273
Monads	p. 274
The Signature of All Things	p. 275
For a Masseuse and Prostitute	p. 277
Lyell's Hypothesis Again	p. 278
Sharp in My Heart	p. 280
Blues	p. 281
Yugao	p. 282
January Night	p. 283
Delia Rexroth	p. 284
Hojoki	p. 285
Andree Rexroth	p. 288
A Letter to William Carlos Williams	p. 291
Maximian, Elegy v	p. 294
Blood and Sand	p. 295
The Giant Weapon	p. 296
For the Chinese Actress, Gardenia Chang	p. 297
Ausonius, Epistle VII	p. 298
Advent	p. 299
Lucretius, III, 1053-1076	p. 300
No!	p. 302
A Christmas Note for Geraldine Udell	p. 302
Stone and Flower	p. 303
Gambling	p. 305
Me	p. 305
The Light on the Pewter Dish	p. 305
Me Again	p. 306
On a Beautiful Bar Butterfly in the Black Cat	p. 306
Value Neuter	p. 307
Discrimination	p. 307
Fact	p. 308
De Fera Dormita	p. 308
Bonapartisme	p. 308
Further Advantages of Learning	p. 309
Under Soracte	p. 309
Rosa Mundi	p. 313
Leda Hidden	p. 314
Golden Section	p. 315
Time Spirals	p. 318
Mirror	p. 319
Only Years	p. 320
Empty Mirror	p. 321
Doubled Mirrors	p. 322
The Dragon and the Unicorn (1944-1950)	p. 323
The Reflecting Trees of Being and Not Being	p. 525
She Is Away	p. 526
Mocking Birds	p. 527
Loneliness	p. 528
The Old Song and Dance	p. 529
Growing	p. 530
A Living Pearl	p. 530
Fifty	p. 533
Halley's Comet	p. 534
The Great Nebula of Andromeda	p. 534
The Heart of Herakles	p. 535
A Maze of Sparks of Gold	p. 536
A Sword in a Cloud of Light	p. 536
Protoplasm of Light	p. 538
Blood on a Dead World	p. 540
Quietly	p. 541
For Eli Jacobson	p. 541
On a Flyleaf of Rime - Gaspara Stampa	p. 543
Time Is the Mercy of Eternity	p. 544
A Singing Voice	p. 549
Our Home Is in the Rocks	p. 550
Xmas Coming	p. 553
My Heart's As Gay As a Young Sunflower	p. 553
The Mirror in the Woods	p. 555
The Bad Old Days	p. 555
A Dialogue of Watching	p. 557
Dry Autumn	p. 557
Spring Rain	p. 558
Autumn Rain	p. 559
Clear Autumn	p. 560
Snow	p. 562
Another Twilight	p. 563
The Orphic Soul	p. 564
Human, Avian, Vegetable, Blood	p. 564
Thou Shalt Not Kill	p. 565
The American Century	p. 574
A Bestiary	p. 574
Mother Goose	p. 584
On a Military Graveyard	p. 591
Survival of the Fittest	p. 591
Revolt	p. 591
After Sappho	p. 592
Lost Etc	p. 592
Neatness Is All	p. 592
Sense of Proportion	p. 592
A Bread and Butter Letter	p. 593
Metempsychosis	p. 593
On the Post Office	p. 593
After Sa'adi	p. 593
Fact	p. 593
From the Persian (1)	p. 594
Illusion	p. 594
From the Persian (2)	p. 594
Valuta	p. 594
Last Visit to the Swimming Pool Soviets	p. 595
Portrait of the Author as a Young Anarchist	p. 596
After the Anthology	p. 596
They Say This Isn't a Poem	p. 597
Codicil	p. 599
Homer in Basic	p. 603
Fish Peddler and Cobbler	p. 604
Proust's Madeleine	p. 607
Autumn	p. 608
Christmas	p. 608
Spring	p. 610
Spring	p. 611
Spring	p. 612
On the Eve of the Plebiscite	p. 612
Elegy on Encountering the Trouble of the World	p. 614
Rogation Days	p. 615
Ascension Night	p. 616
Venice	p. 617
Rose Colored Glasses	p. 619
Observations in a Cornish Teashop	p. 619
Eight for Ornette's Music	p. 620
Two for Brew and Dick	p. 624
This Night Only	p. 626
At Least That Abandon	p. 626
An Easy Song	p. 627
Coming	p. 628
Pacific Beach	p. 629
Maroon Bells	p. 629
Aspen Meadows	p. 630
Like Queen Christina	p. 631
Andromeda Chained to Her Rock the Great Nebula in Her Heart	p. 635
Travelers in Erewhon	p. 638
Oaxaca 1925	p. 639
Gradualism	p. 640
Open the Blind	p. 640
High Provence	p. 641
Camargue	p. 642
Among the Cypresses at the End of the Way of the Cross	p. 642
Sottoportico San Zaccaria	p. 643
Leaving L'Atelier - Aix-en-Provence	p. 643
Time Is an Inclusion Series Said McTaggart	p. 644
Phaedo	p. 646
Park in the Public's or In the Public, Parks	p. 646
Song for a Dancer	p. 647
Ottffssente	p. 648
Cinque Terre	p. 650
Took	p. 650
A Flute Overheard	p. 651
The Wheel Revolves	p. 652
Organization Men in Affluent Society	p. 653
The Hanged Man	p. 654
Yin and Yang	p. 655
The Heart's Garden, the Garden's Heart	p. 659
A Song at the Winepresses	p. 681
The Spark in the Tinder of Knowing	p. 684
Now the starlit moonless Spring	p. 689
The Family	p. 689
No Word	p. 690
Schatten Kusse, Schatten Liebe	p. 690
Hapax	p. 691
Confusion of the Senses	p. 693
Blue Sunday	p. 693
I Dream of Leslie	p. 694
Education	p. 695
Privacy	p. 695
Parity	p. 696
It Is a German Honeymoon	p. 696
Bei Wannsee	p. 698
Red Maple Leaves	p. 699
It Turns Over	p. 700
Star and Crescent	p. 700
La Vie en Rose	p. 701
Void Only	p. 701
Suchness	p. 702
Late half moon	p. 702
Your Birthday in the California Mountains	p. 703
The Flower Sutra	p. 703
"Cold before dawn"	p. 704
"A cottage in the mist"	p. 704
"Past and future all away"	p. 704
"Slowly the moon rises"	p. 705
"Moonless night"	p. 705
"Spring puddles give way"	p. 705
"A dawn in a tree of birds"	p. 705
"Past midnight"	p. 706
"As the years pass"	p. 706
"In the dark forest the whisper"	p. 706
"A long lifetime"	p. 706
The City of the Moon	p. 707
The Fall of Ch'ou	p. 710
Erinnerung	p. 711
Lost Love	p. 711
The Love Poems of Marichiko	p. 715
The Silver Swan	p. 732
On Flower Wreath Hill	p. 744
About the Author	p. 753
About the Editors	p. 754
A Note on the Text	p. 755
Appendix	p. 756
Index of Titles	p. 761
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.