University of Iowa Press, 2002 eISBN: 978-1-58729-416-7 | Paper: 978-0-87745-807-4 Library of Congress Classification PS3572.O3947S63 2002 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Karen Volkman’s award-winning collection Spar has as its central form a highly compressed, musical variant of the prose poem. Volkman develops a new lyric density that marries the immediacy of image-centered poetry to the rhythmic resources of prose. Her first poem begins, “Someone was searching for a Form of Fire,” and this wild urge to seek form—and thus definition—in the most uncontainable of elements propels the book forward; each poem maps the mind’s evolving positions in response to its variable and perilous encounters. Sometimes the encounter is romantic or purely carnal, a sensual landscape of human relations. At other times, nature itself has an almost humanly emotional connection to the speaker. While very much a living voice, the poems’ speaker is not a consistent self but a mutable figure buffeted by tenderness, terror, irony, or lust into elaborate evasions, exclamations, verbal hijinks, and lyric flights. As its title suggests, Spar embodies both resistance and aspiration, while its epigraphs further emphasize the simultaneous allure and danger of the unknown within the sensual and material worlds and in the mind itself.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Karen Volkman's first book, Crash's Law, was chosen for the National Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in the Paris Review, New Republic, Colorado Review, American Letters & Commentary, and Fence. She is currently poet-in-residence at the University of Chicago.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Create Desire
I won’t go in today
Shrewd star
The problem of these
‘‘Why are you here’’
If it be event
Meet me two years
More feet on more
May
What, I said
There Comes a time
What we know
Kiss Me Deadly
O verb, o void
Lady of the lake
August could ask
Yellow drapes
Although the paths
There was a stare
And when the nights
It could be a bird
Poem (My hayseed harlequin)
Or would triumph
Octaves, ovations
The first greeting
I was watching
Now I promise
When kiss spells
Betrayal
He deciphers
Tender feather
Yes the red flower
A story left
I never wish to
Dear noon
Shadow of a Doubt
The rain falls
Winter Abstract
A light says why
O coronet
The end of the day
Implorers, connivers
What I meet of
And the urge is less
Poem (Black corners of winter)
I have a friend
To take, to make
Do not think, beloved
Lost he says
Heroic Roses
No noise subtracts
I believe there is
We did things
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University of Iowa Press, 2002 eISBN: 978-1-58729-416-7 Paper: 978-0-87745-807-4
Karen Volkman’s award-winning collection Spar has as its central form a highly compressed, musical variant of the prose poem. Volkman develops a new lyric density that marries the immediacy of image-centered poetry to the rhythmic resources of prose. Her first poem begins, “Someone was searching for a Form of Fire,” and this wild urge to seek form—and thus definition—in the most uncontainable of elements propels the book forward; each poem maps the mind’s evolving positions in response to its variable and perilous encounters. Sometimes the encounter is romantic or purely carnal, a sensual landscape of human relations. At other times, nature itself has an almost humanly emotional connection to the speaker. While very much a living voice, the poems’ speaker is not a consistent self but a mutable figure buffeted by tenderness, terror, irony, or lust into elaborate evasions, exclamations, verbal hijinks, and lyric flights. As its title suggests, Spar embodies both resistance and aspiration, while its epigraphs further emphasize the simultaneous allure and danger of the unknown within the sensual and material worlds and in the mind itself.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Karen Volkman's first book, Crash's Law, was chosen for the National Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in the Paris Review, New Republic, Colorado Review, American Letters & Commentary, and Fence. She is currently poet-in-residence at the University of Chicago.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Create Desire
I won’t go in today
Shrewd star
The problem of these
‘‘Why are you here’’
If it be event
Meet me two years
More feet on more
May
What, I said
There Comes a time
What we know
Kiss Me Deadly
O verb, o void
Lady of the lake
August could ask
Yellow drapes
Although the paths
There was a stare
And when the nights
It could be a bird
Poem (My hayseed harlequin)
Or would triumph
Octaves, ovations
The first greeting
I was watching
Now I promise
When kiss spells
Betrayal
He deciphers
Tender feather
Yes the red flower
A story left
I never wish to
Dear noon
Shadow of a Doubt
The rain falls
Winter Abstract
A light says why
O coronet
The end of the day
Implorers, connivers
What I meet of
And the urge is less
Poem (Black corners of winter)
I have a friend
To take, to make
Do not think, beloved
Lost he says
Heroic Roses
No noise subtracts
I believe there is
We did things
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 | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE