University of Wisconsin Press, 1997 eISBN: 978-0-299-15723-4 | Cloth: 978-0-299-15720-3 | Paper: 978-0-299-15724-1 Library of Congress Classification PS3569.H574D66 1997 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Winner of the 1997 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry
Selected by Rita Dove
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Betsy Sholl grew up on the NewJersey shore, lived in Boston and Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and now lives in Portland, Maine. She teaches at the University of Southern Maine and in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. She has published four books of poetry, including Changing Faces, Appalachian Winter, and Rooms Overhead . The fourth, The Red Line, won the 1991 Associated Writing Programs Award for Poetry.
REVIEWS
"Don't Explain accomplishes that most difficult of tasks: the weaving together of seemingly unrelated events so that revelation unfolds effortlessly. These poems are what narrative can aspire to—namely, the grace and ease of the lyric rhapsody. And yet the charm of the anecdotes, her facility with line and image, never take precedence over the hard facts of our daily living."—Rita Dove, Judge, Citation for 1997 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry
"These poems remind us that the most memorable verse is not merely the product of talent or skill (although Sholl's poems have always possessed both of these things in abundance), but of something more raw and ineffable—call it courage. Sholl's poems insist that there is no separation between self and world, and that the moral duty of poetry is to carry the world with the same delicacy and grace with which their speaker bears herself. Don't Explain is an urgent and prophetic book."—David Wojahn
"Our fallen world, these unflinching poems say, is not a world of lost souls—that's too Tragic, too literary—but of souls getting lost, that is, living…eventually keeping nothing out. Sholl gets to the midst of that progress by refusing the exalted aerial view—which is why Don't Explain is cause for exaltation—as again and again these poems fall back to their world, a world, Sholl says, "worth falling for." The result: poetry: the past becomes passage, undergone but never gone under."—William Olsen
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
I
Behind the Saint-Lazare Station
The Stream
With You in the Darkness
To the Dregs
The Rim
Different Porches
Loose Keys
Undersong
Style
Mysterioso
Chances
II
Blues Is My Companion
Festival in the Park
Test Patterns
The Past
Hood
Pink Slip
Dogs
Midnight Flowers
Babysitting to Thelonious Monk
A Kind of Darkness
Between Pickets
III
The Tiny Gate
Fine Arts
Valentines
Autobiography in Third Person
Monkey House
Halfway
Falling
Four Crows at Dusk
Sparrows
Don't Explain
Redbud
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University of Wisconsin Press, 1997 eISBN: 978-0-299-15723-4 Cloth: 978-0-299-15720-3 Paper: 978-0-299-15724-1
Winner of the 1997 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry
Selected by Rita Dove
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Betsy Sholl grew up on the NewJersey shore, lived in Boston and Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and now lives in Portland, Maine. She teaches at the University of Southern Maine and in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. She has published four books of poetry, including Changing Faces, Appalachian Winter, and Rooms Overhead . The fourth, The Red Line, won the 1991 Associated Writing Programs Award for Poetry.
REVIEWS
"Don't Explain accomplishes that most difficult of tasks: the weaving together of seemingly unrelated events so that revelation unfolds effortlessly. These poems are what narrative can aspire to—namely, the grace and ease of the lyric rhapsody. And yet the charm of the anecdotes, her facility with line and image, never take precedence over the hard facts of our daily living."—Rita Dove, Judge, Citation for 1997 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry
"These poems remind us that the most memorable verse is not merely the product of talent or skill (although Sholl's poems have always possessed both of these things in abundance), but of something more raw and ineffable—call it courage. Sholl's poems insist that there is no separation between self and world, and that the moral duty of poetry is to carry the world with the same delicacy and grace with which their speaker bears herself. Don't Explain is an urgent and prophetic book."—David Wojahn
"Our fallen world, these unflinching poems say, is not a world of lost souls—that's too Tragic, too literary—but of souls getting lost, that is, living…eventually keeping nothing out. Sholl gets to the midst of that progress by refusing the exalted aerial view—which is why Don't Explain is cause for exaltation—as again and again these poems fall back to their world, a world, Sholl says, "worth falling for." The result: poetry: the past becomes passage, undergone but never gone under."—William Olsen
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
I
Behind the Saint-Lazare Station
The Stream
With You in the Darkness
To the Dregs
The Rim
Different Porches
Loose Keys
Undersong
Style
Mysterioso
Chances
II
Blues Is My Companion
Festival in the Park
Test Patterns
The Past
Hood
Pink Slip
Dogs
Midnight Flowers
Babysitting to Thelonious Monk
A Kind of Darkness
Between Pickets
III
The Tiny Gate
Fine Arts
Valentines
Autobiography in Third Person
Monkey House
Halfway
Falling
Four Crows at Dusk
Sparrows
Don't Explain
Redbud
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE