Michael Brosnan (Poet)
Description
"This world of us - / it seems only capable of revealing hints of care / in slant rhymes and odd enjambments. / And I'm wondering why we don't cry mor
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e, / knowing there's so little we / control." In this profound volume of experimental poetry, Michael Brosnan exhibits exquisite control as he employs (and invents) tools of verse language (far beyond mere "odd enjambments") to interrogate - and deconstruct, literally - the word sublime, in all of its senses. "Excellence? Grandeur? Beauty? Inspiring unavoidable awe?" No mere exercise in linguistics, however, his enterprise provides the opportunity to consider no less than the entirety of human existence in the face of "the nagging matter of / the coming Sixth Extinction - hurried along / by superciliousness and / human hunger for what cannot be obtained." Many sublime companions (real and imaginary) are along for the ride - Mozart, Coltrane, Jimmy Page, Moby-Dick, Dr. Philosophy - while erasures of Wordworth poems frame and intersperse the work (an act of distillation that serves as a model for the book as a whole), and the titles of a broad array of books whisper of his extensive research. Impossible to describe in brief, it must be read to experience the sweep of Brosnan's vision and venture. As for the payoff: in the end he is after "a small wave of contentment" as expressed in the craft of "Origami" - "Today, I'm seeking new possibilities / in a small illusion with unambiguous lines. // Look, world, look. / Our story is in tatters. // Here's a 'dove' for you to hold. / I give it in peace. Make it fly.""--
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