Desire in L.A. confronts limitless longing in a city that is itself without limits. In these poems, the object of desire is decidedly missing, whether that object be love or beauty or the past. Shifting even within a single poem, and certainly from section to section, the objects of desire in Martha Ronk's poetry become as elusive as the unnamed Marilyn Monroe--"that image of another's skirts"--of the title poem, or the moment captured in "A photograph as good as a picture": "He leans forward with such / fervor, yet isn't young and something / decidedly is happening, even / to the beefy fellow in his white / short-sleeved shirt. A photograph-- / oh, perhaps not the same as a / Manet, but it is Auden, and / for whatever reason he stares at / the square flesh neckline / of her dress. He is forward / in his chair, rumpled about / the collar and everyone is wearing / black and white. It is the formal / occasion of how much he cares / to be there, Venice, 1951 / and how much I care to see him / no matter what for, longing / like that." Moving from thwarted examples of family and place to language and its corruptions, from classical Japanese love poems to failed love in the southwestern desert, from emotionality to artifice, the book ends with a series focused on the slipperiness of all categories.
In 60 black-and-white panoramas, Brown documents the changing landscape along the western edge of Southern California. These stark, compelling images reveal a world scraped and reshaped by construction equipment, with boulders pushed aside, stretches of earth flattened, and high-tech communities springing to life. 60 duotones.
Glass Grapes and Other Stories is the first full-length collection of short stories by distinguished poet and fiction writer Martha Ronk. Ronk’s work has garnered critical accolades and numerous awards, including, most recently, a 2005 PEN USA Award in poetry, a 2007 NEA Fellowship, and a 2007 National Poetry Series Award. Glass Grapes is a collection of short, experimental stories, usually dominated by an object imbued with fetishistic qualities by an obsessive, self-involved narrator. The language of these stories is repetitive, provocative, imagistic, occasionally comic, and unnerving. Ronk’s fiction moves with the same grace, beauty, and attention to language as her most accomplished poetry.
In Ronk's book, language is in the mood for mischief, while still being acutely attentive to its own unreliability. We're pulled into this sparklingly original work where ordinariness veers coolly and equivocation beguiles. These gorgeously agile poems reveal us as our never-ready and always-ready selves."—Molly Bendall, author of Ariadne's Island "Ronk, in her 'looking for/ the conjunction of the past and the present,' produces a poetry that questions the context of living, its arrangements, its decisions. Her sure-footed investigation is equaled by its prosody of progression/recursion in a particular lexicon of grace and elegance. Reader, find surprises in this lovely packet of poems."—Norma Cole, author of Spinoza in Her Youth
Each entry in this book probes the dissolving boundaries between those sharing space with one another; and the various genres in the book—prose poem, creative nonfiction, and personal essay—echo the theme of interdependence. Transfer of Qualities addresses the uncanny and myriad ways in which people and things, but also people and those around them, exchange qualities with one another, moving in on and altering stance, attitude, mood, and gesture. Material things often seem amazingly alive and this collection follows an author engrossed with the boundaries between life and death, the moving and the still, and the stone-like book and the vivid stirring within the pages. There are many influences behind this collection, but the major genie of the piece is Henry James whose musings in The Sacred Fount provided the book's title and direction.
Desire in L.A. confronts limitless longing in a city that is itself without limits. In these poems, the object of desire is decidedly missing, whether that object be love or beauty or the past. Shifting even within a single poem, and certainly from section to section, the objects of desire in Martha Ronk's poetry become as elusive as the unnamed Marilyn Monroe--"that image of another's skirts"--of the title poem, or the moment captured in "A photograph as good as a picture": "He leans forward with such / fervor, yet isn't young and something / decidedly is happening, even / to the beefy fellow in his white / short-sleeved shirt. A photograph-- / oh, perhaps not the same as a / Manet, but it is Auden, and / for whatever reason he stares at / the square flesh neckline / of her dress. He is forward / in his chair, rumpled about / the collar and everyone is wearing / black and white. It is the formal / occasion of how much he cares / to be there, Venice, 1951 / and how much I care to see him / no matter what for, longing / like that." Moving from thwarted examples of family and place to language and its corruptions, from classical Japanese love poems to failed love in the southwestern desert, from emotionality to artifice, the book ends with a series focused on the slipperiness of all categories.
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