University of Illinois Press, 2008 Paper: 978-0-252-07580-3 | Cloth: 978-0-252-03308-7 | eISBN: 978-0-252-09254-1 Library of Congress Classification PS3569.T3337I46 2008 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In accessible poems full of rich detail and painterly images, Maura Stanton looks under the surface of the ordinary, hoping to find the magic spark below the visible. In poems both humorous and elegaic, she gathers strange facts, odd events, and overlooked stories to construct her own vision of immortality, one made up of fragments of history and geography and the illusions of yearning human beings. From elephants in Ceylon to Nazi prisoners in Ireland, from Beowulf to Jane Austen, from sonnets to prose poems to blank verse, Immortal Sofa conjures our complex existence in all its sorrowful but astonishing variety.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Maura Stanton is a professor of English and creative writing at Indiana University. She has published five books of poetry, including Snow on Snow and Glacier Wine, as well as a novel and three collections of short stories. Her poems and stories have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Chicago Tribune, The Antioch Review, and The New Yorker.
REVIEWS
"Maura Stanton presents us with a world of abundance and careful discrimination, a world that deserves the same king of assiduous attention that has gone into making these poems."--Prairie Schooner
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
I. God's Ode To Creation
Nineteenth Century Animals
Translating
Dead Moth in a Bottle of Mineral Water
Food Shows
Stare-e-o Vision Postcards
At the Vet's
Practicing T'ai Chi Ch'uan
A Description of Our Morning
Pride and Prejudice: The Game
Through the Dark
God's Ode to Creation
II. Lost And Found
Lost and Found
Ode to Pokeweed
Milk of Human Kindness
The Gilles
Dear Listener, Dear Reader
Tatyana
Twenty Questions
Poem on a Forbidden Subject
A Night in Assisi
Psalm for a Lost Summer
Vacations in America
III. The Tale Of Hermann Goertz
The Tale of Herman Goertz
IV. Cimetiere Virtual
Oleander Cloud
Letter to the Old Magician
Elegy for Olive
Abstract Art
Cocktail Glasses
Meditation While Cooking Soup
Beginning Poetry Writing, 1968
Greed
Dream Kitchen
Little Sonata for Early November
Cimeti¿re Virtual
Immortal Sofa
University of Illinois Press, 2008 Paper: 978-0-252-07580-3 Cloth: 978-0-252-03308-7 eISBN: 978-0-252-09254-1
In accessible poems full of rich detail and painterly images, Maura Stanton looks under the surface of the ordinary, hoping to find the magic spark below the visible. In poems both humorous and elegaic, she gathers strange facts, odd events, and overlooked stories to construct her own vision of immortality, one made up of fragments of history and geography and the illusions of yearning human beings. From elephants in Ceylon to Nazi prisoners in Ireland, from Beowulf to Jane Austen, from sonnets to prose poems to blank verse, Immortal Sofa conjures our complex existence in all its sorrowful but astonishing variety.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Maura Stanton is a professor of English and creative writing at Indiana University. She has published five books of poetry, including Snow on Snow and Glacier Wine, as well as a novel and three collections of short stories. Her poems and stories have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Chicago Tribune, The Antioch Review, and The New Yorker.
REVIEWS
"Maura Stanton presents us with a world of abundance and careful discrimination, a world that deserves the same king of assiduous attention that has gone into making these poems."--Prairie Schooner
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
I. God's Ode To Creation
Nineteenth Century Animals
Translating
Dead Moth in a Bottle of Mineral Water
Food Shows
Stare-e-o Vision Postcards
At the Vet's
Practicing T'ai Chi Ch'uan
A Description of Our Morning
Pride and Prejudice: The Game
Through the Dark
God's Ode to Creation
II. Lost And Found
Lost and Found
Ode to Pokeweed
Milk of Human Kindness
The Gilles
Dear Listener, Dear Reader
Tatyana
Twenty Questions
Poem on a Forbidden Subject
A Night in Assisi
Psalm for a Lost Summer
Vacations in America
III. The Tale Of Hermann Goertz
The Tale of Herman Goertz
IV. Cimetiere Virtual
Oleander Cloud
Letter to the Old Magician
Elegy for Olive
Abstract Art
Cocktail Glasses
Meditation While Cooking Soup
Beginning Poetry Writing, 1968
Greed
Dream Kitchen
Little Sonata for Early November
Cimeti¿re Virtual
Immortal Sofa
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC