Title
Contents
Down on the Farm -- Impromptu -- Spectacle Island, Boston Harbor -- Mt. Auburn Owl -- Jugglebirds Abroad -- Seminar -- From the Book of Foxes -- My Mother and the Myriad Things -- Soon -- Manners -- My Brother's Back -- Nots -- Accidentals -- Fogbow -- Souvenir -- Mt. Pinatubo -- Fortune -- Look Here -- Northeast Suite -- Origin -- Passage with Owls -- Slip -- Ease -- Spill -- Bog at Black Pond -- Understory
Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1997
Series
The Iowa poetry prize
Award Date
1996
Publisher
University of Iowa Press
Place
Iowa City
Total Pages
68
ISBN
9780877455820
Abstract
Pamela Alexander's poetry is characterized by inventive language, scrupulous accuracy of imagery, and a winning fusion of the comic and the deeply serious. Her subjects vary as widely as her settings, which range from the New Hampshire woods to the Arizona desert. A family life eccentric to the point of chaos, close observations of wildlife, and coastal sailing are among the poet's topics. Despite this variety, Inland has an emerging organization that suggests a kind of plot. The family is left behind in the way that families of origin always are, revealed fully only in perspective. The longest poem here, "Swallowing the Anchor" (the title is the sailors' term for giving up the sea), is also the most directly personal. It closes the section of the book in which the poet comes to terms with losses, including the death of a loved one. She does this with grace - and her wit is not jokes, her poignancy is not sentimentality.
Rights
Copyright 1997 Pamela Alexander
URL
http://ir.uiowa.edu/uipress_ipp/4