Drift

Ebook
On sale Oct 09, 2013 | 96 Pages | 9780307522160

"The world is touched and stands forth," writes Mary Kinzie in this book of seductive poetic experiment. In lines by turns fragmented and reflective, she shatters and reassembles such curiosities as an engraving by Albrecht Durer and the portrait of a notorious suicide whose children develop a secret telepathy. In one of her many powerful longer pieces, she collects glittering shards from myriad versions of the Cinderella story:

Was the young girl running
out of it because
--recall the blood
within the shoe?--
it hurt her?

Kinzie's verse moves mysteriously between folk-lore and urban devastation, between white magic and the concoction of mood drugs in the modern laboratory. In each poem, she draws our attention to the chinks of light in the dark narratives that surround us, in a language animated by her sympathy and deep moral intelligence.
Close Path

What have I trained forwhat
have the years of
whatever I did
during them
made me
ready to take on
if the tears are to
stream coldly
like long streaks
of rain down the light
brick of the storehouse
and I become
afraid to look
lest the pain
travel
with my breathing
its path
near enough
to disappear
down
© Star Black
Mary Kinzie is the author of six previous collections of poetry. Her earlier volumes include DriftAutumn Eros, and Summers of Vietnam. She is the literary executor of American poet Louise Bogan and the author of A Poet’s Guide to Poetry. View titles by Mary Kinzie

About

"The world is touched and stands forth," writes Mary Kinzie in this book of seductive poetic experiment. In lines by turns fragmented and reflective, she shatters and reassembles such curiosities as an engraving by Albrecht Durer and the portrait of a notorious suicide whose children develop a secret telepathy. In one of her many powerful longer pieces, she collects glittering shards from myriad versions of the Cinderella story:

Was the young girl running
out of it because
--recall the blood
within the shoe?--
it hurt her?

Kinzie's verse moves mysteriously between folk-lore and urban devastation, between white magic and the concoction of mood drugs in the modern laboratory. In each poem, she draws our attention to the chinks of light in the dark narratives that surround us, in a language animated by her sympathy and deep moral intelligence.

Excerpt

Close Path

What have I trained forwhat
have the years of
whatever I did
during them
made me
ready to take on
if the tears are to
stream coldly
like long streaks
of rain down the light
brick of the storehouse
and I become
afraid to look
lest the pain
travel
with my breathing
its path
near enough
to disappear
down

Author

© Star Black
Mary Kinzie is the author of six previous collections of poetry. Her earlier volumes include DriftAutumn Eros, and Summers of Vietnam. She is the literary executor of American poet Louise Bogan and the author of A Poet’s Guide to Poetry. View titles by Mary Kinzie

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