University of Arkansas Press, 1998 eISBN: 978-1-61075-209-1 | Paper: 978-1-55728-516-4 Library of Congress Classification PS3552.U732473I82 1998 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In his plain-spoken lyrics and dramatic monologues, Michael Burns digs at the marrow. His poems—in formal and free verse—are quick, incisive, and always capable of revealing the dark whimsies of fate and the pain of our own actions and inactions.
These poems travel to Casqui mounds in the Arkansas Delta, traffic-clogged urban streets, a wasteland in Oklahoma, and Faulkner’s Rowan Oak. They assume the voices of others so convincingly that we find ourselves face to face with hunters, philanderers, husbands, a Union general, a Snopes, and even a version of God.
Gathering the images of each place, crafting lines in clear, unpretentious language, Burns comes across new knowledge, confronting the ever-present mysteries and the ways the mind loves to lie to itself.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Author of three poetry collections, Michael Burns teaches creative writing and English at Southwest Missouri State University. For the University of Arkansas Press, he edited Discovery and Reminiscence: Essays on the Poetry of Mona Van Duyn. His poems have appeared in Poetry, the Paris Review, the Southern Review, and many other journals and anthologies.
REVIEWS
“Clarifying the language like so much butter, Michael Burns provides a particular insight into national, local, masculine, and finally human concerns, all with a dry eye and a warm heart. It is the very best butter.”
—Richard Howard
“I like the way Michael Burns’s quiet irony and a submerged ache work their way to the surface of the language in poems whose transparent simplicity proves deceptive.”
—Rachel Hadas
“Loneliness, pain, emptiness, banality—these are the afflictions that attack the humanity in Michael Burns’s powerful poetry. And they are the sorrows that the rounds of daily life try, and sometimes manage, to assuage. ‘I didn’t come this far to find what’s real,’ says an amateur archaeologist. But the poet who reports the line has come a long way and delivers to us only what is real. Admirably honest, honestly admirable: It Will Be All Right in the Morning is the true thing.”
—Fred Chappell
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
1
Joy’s Grape
Ghazal
.38
Remembering a Friend at Middle Age Who Went to the Bars Alone and Danced
That Winter
Apology
When It Was Over
The Worst of It
On a Back Road to Memphis
2
Dissembling
On Tenderness, and Timing
The Lexhibitionist
Hay, Waiting
Where De Soto Met the Casqui
Temenos
For William Stafford
Looking for Frank Stanford on the Internet
Tending the Dead
3
When God Met Adam and Eve for Breakfast
The Old Duck Hunter Tells One of His Favorite Stories
General Sickles Sits for a Portrait
Snopes Talks about Taking the Rowan Oak Tour, and Vengeance
4th of July
Moonlighting
What I Know about Gonzaga
Some Answers
Drafted, 1969
The Ascension
The Father: For Someone He Never Knew
Willy Ballard
4
Star Bright
Winter Coats
At the Supermarket
Patterning Grace
Elegy for Lesley
Fifth Grade
North Elementary, Dropping Off the Kids
I Drop My Daughter Off at the Early Morning Prayer Rally
In Another Time
Notes
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
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Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Arkansas Press, 1998 eISBN: 978-1-61075-209-1 Paper: 978-1-55728-516-4
In his plain-spoken lyrics and dramatic monologues, Michael Burns digs at the marrow. His poems—in formal and free verse—are quick, incisive, and always capable of revealing the dark whimsies of fate and the pain of our own actions and inactions.
These poems travel to Casqui mounds in the Arkansas Delta, traffic-clogged urban streets, a wasteland in Oklahoma, and Faulkner’s Rowan Oak. They assume the voices of others so convincingly that we find ourselves face to face with hunters, philanderers, husbands, a Union general, a Snopes, and even a version of God.
Gathering the images of each place, crafting lines in clear, unpretentious language, Burns comes across new knowledge, confronting the ever-present mysteries and the ways the mind loves to lie to itself.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Author of three poetry collections, Michael Burns teaches creative writing and English at Southwest Missouri State University. For the University of Arkansas Press, he edited Discovery and Reminiscence: Essays on the Poetry of Mona Van Duyn. His poems have appeared in Poetry, the Paris Review, the Southern Review, and many other journals and anthologies.
REVIEWS
“Clarifying the language like so much butter, Michael Burns provides a particular insight into national, local, masculine, and finally human concerns, all with a dry eye and a warm heart. It is the very best butter.”
—Richard Howard
“I like the way Michael Burns’s quiet irony and a submerged ache work their way to the surface of the language in poems whose transparent simplicity proves deceptive.”
—Rachel Hadas
“Loneliness, pain, emptiness, banality—these are the afflictions that attack the humanity in Michael Burns’s powerful poetry. And they are the sorrows that the rounds of daily life try, and sometimes manage, to assuage. ‘I didn’t come this far to find what’s real,’ says an amateur archaeologist. But the poet who reports the line has come a long way and delivers to us only what is real. Admirably honest, honestly admirable: It Will Be All Right in the Morning is the true thing.”
—Fred Chappell
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
1
Joy’s Grape
Ghazal
.38
Remembering a Friend at Middle Age Who Went to the Bars Alone and Danced
That Winter
Apology
When It Was Over
The Worst of It
On a Back Road to Memphis
2
Dissembling
On Tenderness, and Timing
The Lexhibitionist
Hay, Waiting
Where De Soto Met the Casqui
Temenos
For William Stafford
Looking for Frank Stanford on the Internet
Tending the Dead
3
When God Met Adam and Eve for Breakfast
The Old Duck Hunter Tells One of His Favorite Stories
General Sickles Sits for a Portrait
Snopes Talks about Taking the Rowan Oak Tour, and Vengeance
4th of July
Moonlighting
What I Know about Gonzaga
Some Answers
Drafted, 1969
The Ascension
The Father: For Someone He Never Knew
Willy Ballard
4
Star Bright
Winter Coats
At the Supermarket
Patterning Grace
Elegy for Lesley
Fifth Grade
North Elementary, Dropping Off the Kids
I Drop My Daughter Off at the Early Morning Prayer Rally
In Another Time
Notes
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