Vacationland

by Monson, Ander

• ISBN13: 9781932195163
• ISBN10: 1932195165
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-01-01
• Publisher: Tupelo Pr

Summary

These are pleasure-inducing lamentations with an enticingly experimental edge. They elegize Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the copper mines, tourism, family, amateur radio, winter and much more. These poems are affected by the claustrophobic, half-year Michigan winters, where the nearest city is a four-hour car ride. Monson's is a wildly original mind, creating exotic variations on traditional forms. Ander Monson draws from his life in Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, the deep South and Saudi Arabia. He has an MFA from the University of Alabama. He edits the magazine DIAGRAM and the New Michigan Press and publishes widely. His novel in stories, Other Electricities, will be released by Sarabande Books.

Author Biography

Ander Monson teaches at Grand Valley State University.

Table of Contents

For Jesse, so long gone
Salt	p. 3
Inventory elegy 1 : a paper remnant	p. 4
Entry-level elegy	p. 5
After you've gone on and through	p. 7
Things come up	p. 9
Astonish	p. 10
Alibi	p. 11
Elegy analogy I	p. 13
Gold and someone (flashback)	p. 14
Excision	p. 16
Celebrity	p. 17
Summer is a mystery in Michigan	p. 18
Commiserate	p. 19
Vacationland	p. 20
For Liz, that X and then forever, and for some others, too
Proprietary elegy	p. 23
Inventory elegy 2 : your grandma sent you gum in letters	p. 24
Approximation	p. 25
I am getting serious about grief	p. 27
Still life with half of Walter Mitty	p. 29
My grandfather's thumb	p. 30
Burn, burn	p. 31
Elegy for luggage	p. 32
Contingency elegy	p. 33
Things are not as bad as they seem	p. 35
Self portrait with transgression	p. 37
Lawrence Welk dies	p. 38
Outline towards an antidote : I	p. 39
Outline towards an antidote : II	p. 40
Outline towards an antidote : III	p. 41
Synonym	p. 42
Vacationland	p. 43
Answers to examination questions	p. 45
Maybe there is a way beyond the winter and the weather : less directed elegies and love poems
Vessel	p. 49
Inventory elegy 3 : the dirty entry	p. 50
Proposed self-elegy with torque	p. 51
Moving through ether	p. 53
Snow amnesia	p. 55
Sonnet : notes from X which might turn out to be an elegy, stemming from the U.S. mail	p. 56
What is less than fire is less than X	p. 57
Elegy for the end of mines and function	p. 59
The blood, thinking	p. 60
The blood proposes that, come spring, we meet on the lawn	p. 62
The blood says stun	p. 64
Excision II	p. 65
Who are the dead	p. 66
Implied love poem	p. 67
There are things I need to tell you about breath	p. 69
Snow meridian	p. 70
What if there is no ice	p. 71
I have a theory about this elegy	p. 72
Big fungus elegy for X as meteor	p. 73
Post-mortem party trick	p. 75
A brief elegy for teeth	p. 76
Elegy for the end of weather	p. 78
Vacationland	p. 79
Self-portrait w/backpack that is filled with onions and that may be emblematic of X	p. 81
Elegy for the odd, where it drains, where it ends	p. 83
Some of the bone has gone missing	p. 85
Miami	p. 86
Index : A	p. 87
Grandiose elegy for D = RT	p. 90
Aerialist	p. 92
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.