Sparrow: New and Selected Poems (Southern Messenger Poets)

Book by Gibbons, Reginald Read more Continue reading Read less FROM LIBRARY JOURNAL
As adduced by the three decades' worth of poetry represented here, the line that separates private concerns from social ones is easily erased. In poems that map the shifting interactions of lyric and narrative modes, former Triquarterly editor Gibbons combines an imagist's visual acuity ("The sunlight gathers the gold-green wall of trees/ in pleats") with a therapist's attention to gesture ("I saw him touch her shoulder/ carefully, as if it had thorns") . While earlier poems reveal the restraining influence of Ezra Pound and the Chinese masters, Gibbons's later work stretches into looser, more outward-looking forms as his lens widens beyond introspection to include the lives of others, often those haunted by loss ("City") or caught up in destructive relationships as a means toward identity and security ("Saints") . Though he sometimes finds himself "getting lost in the pity of it" and allows for some windy passages, Gibbons's honesty of expression and involvement in his subjects prove that at least someone hears the difficult, almost inexpressible stories that would otherwise dissolve in silence.?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. REVIEW
The Affect Of Elms
April To May
An Archaeology Of The Future
At Noon
Away From You
Behind The Mountain
Betrayal
Breath
Buddy
City
The Days
Desterrado, Late 1960s
Dusk
Eating
Elsewhere Children
An Explosion
Fervors: 1. Hope
Fervors: 2. Worship
Fervors: 3. Fear
Fervors: 4. Adventure
Fervors: 5. Rage
Fervors: 6. Love
Fervors: 7. Admiration
Fervors: 8. Quiet
Folk Saying
From A Paper Boat
Hark
Her Love
Hide From Time
Hoppy
Image Of A Young Man, C. 1994
In A Study Over A Stage
In Memoriam Ezra Loomis Pound
In The Kingdom
Lentils
The Letter
Long-ago Yaupon
Lovers
'luckies'
Madrid
Make Me Hear You
Pine Island
Poem
Prayer Before Bathing
A Rememberer
The Ruined Motel
Saints: 1. The Blue Dress
Saints: 10. In The Violent Ward
Saints: 2. A Personal Need
Saints: 3. Where The Green Gulf
Saints: 4. Just Crazy Thinking
Saints: 5. Read This
Saints: 6. Sermon Of The Preacher
Saints: 7. Witness
Saints: 8. The Snarling Dog
Saints: 9. Cash Or Turtle Or Heaven
Small Elegy
Sparrow
St. Valentine's Eve
Stars (1)
Teacher
That Phone Call
Those Who Are Gone
Two Kinds Of Singing: 1. After Salvador Diaz Miron's Example (1901)
Two Kinds Of Singing: After Osip Mandelstam's #54 (1913)
Two Promises
View From A Western Hilltop
The Voice Of Someone Else
White Beach
With Wings/con Alas
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® Read more Continue reading Read less