Poetry And Song

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Poetry into Song

Author : Deborah Stein
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199890161
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis Poetry into Song by : Deborah Stein

Download or read book Poetry into Song written by Deborah Stein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the music of the great song composers--Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, and Strauss--Poetry Into Song offers a systematic introduction to the performance and analysis of Lieder . Part I, "The Language of Poetry," provides chapters on the themes and imagery of German Romanticism and the methods of analysis for German Romantic poetry. Part II, "The Language of the Performer," deals with issues of concern to performers: texture, temporality, articulation, and interpretation of notation and unusual rhythm accents and stresses. Part III provides clearly defined analytical procedures for each of four main chapters on harmony and tonality, melody and motive, rhythm and meter, and form. The concluding chapter compares different settings of the same text, and the volume ends with several appendices that offer text translations, over 40 pages of less accessible song scores, a glossary of technical terms, and a substantial bibliography. Directed toward students in both voice and theory, and toward all singers, the authors establish a framework for the analysis of song based on a process of performing, listening, and analyzing, designed to give the reader a new understanding of the reciprocal interaction between performance and analysis. Emphasizing the masterworks, the book features numerous poetic texts, as well as a core repertory of songs. Examples throughout the text demonstrate points, while end of chapter questions reinforce concepts and provide opportunities for directed analysis. While there are a variety of books on Lieder and on German Romantic poetry, none combines performance, musical analysis, textual analysis, and the interrelation between poetry and music in the systematic, thorough way of Poetry Into Song.

Poetry and the Thought of Song in Nineteenth-century Britain

Author : Elizabeth K. Helsinger
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780813938004
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (38 download)

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Book Synopsis Poetry and the Thought of Song in Nineteenth-century Britain by : Elizabeth K. Helsinger

Download or read book Poetry and the Thought of Song in Nineteenth-century Britain written by Elizabeth K. Helsinger and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In arguing for the crucial importance of song for poets in the long nineteenth century, Elizabeth Helsinger focuses on both the effects of song on lyric forms and the mythopoetics through which poets explored the affinities of poetry with song. Looking in particular at individual poets and poems, Helsinger puts extensive close readings into productive conversation with nineteenth-century German philosophic and British scientific aesthetics. While she considers poets long described as "musical"--Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Gerard Manly Hopkins, Emily Brontë, and Algernon Charles Swinburne--Helsinger also examines the more surprising importance of song for those poets who rethought poetry through the medium of visual art: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Christina Rossetti. In imitating song's forms and sound textures through lyric's rhythm, rhyme, and repetition, these poets were pursuing song's "thought" in a double sense. They not only asked readers to think of particular kinds of song as musical sound in social performance (ballads, national airs, political songs, plainchant) but also invited readers to think like song: to listen to the sounds of a poem as it moves minds in a different way from philosophy or science. By attending to the formal practices of these poets, the music to which the poets were listening, and the stories and myths out of which each forged a poetics that aspired to the condition of music, Helsinger suggests new ways to think about the nature and form of the lyric in the nineteenth century.

Poetic Song Verse

Author : Mike Mattison
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496837290
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Poetic Song Verse by : Mike Mattison

Download or read book Poetic Song Verse written by Mike Mattison and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poetic Song Verse: Blues-Based Popular Music and Poetry invokes and critiques the relationship between blues-based popular music and poetry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume is anchored in music from the 1960s, when a concentration of artists transformed modes of popular music from entertainment to art-that-entertains. Musician Mike Mattison and literary historian Ernest Suarez synthesize a wide range of writing about blues and rock—biographies, histories, articles in popular magazines, personal reminiscences, and a selective smattering of academic studies—to examine the development of a relatively new literary genre dubbed by the authors as “poetic song verse.” They argue that poetic song verse was nurtured in the fifties and early sixties by the blues and in Beat coffee houses, and matured in the mid-to-late sixties in the art of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Gil Scott-Heron, Van Morrison, and others who used voice, instrumentation, arrangement, and production to foreground semantically textured, often allusive, and evocative lyrics that resembled and engaged poetry. Among the questions asked in Poetic Song Verse are: What, exactly, is this new genre? What were its origins? And how has it developed? How do we study and assess it? To answer these questions, Mattison and Suarez engage in an extended discussion of the roots of the relationship between blues-based music and poetry and address how it developed into a distinct literary genre. Unlocking the combination of richly textured lyrics wedded to recorded music reveals a dynamism at the core of poetic song verse that can often go unrealized in what often has been considered merely popular entertainment. This volume balances historical details and analysis of particular songs with accessibility to create a lively, intelligent, and cohesive narrative that provides scholars, teachers, students, music influencers, and devoted fans with an overarching perspective on the poetic power and blues roots of this new literary genre.

Sho

Author : Douglas Kearney
Publisher : Wave Books
ISBN 13 : 1950268624
Total Pages : 90 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Sho by : Douglas Kearney

Download or read book Sho written by Douglas Kearney and published by Wave Books. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR POETRY Eschewing series and performative typography, Douglas Kearney’s Sho aims to hit crooked licks with straight-seeming sticks. Navigating the complex penetrability of language, these poems are sonic in their espousal of Black vernacular traditions, while examining histories, pop culture, myth, and folklore. Both dazzling and devastating, Sho is a genius work of literary precision, wordplay, farce, and critical irony. In his “stove-like imagination,” Kearney has concocted poems that destabilize the spectacle, leaving looky-loos with an important uncertainty about the intersection between violence and entertainment.

Lines and Lyrics

Author : Matt BaileyShea
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 030024567X
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Lines and Lyrics by : Matt BaileyShea

Download or read book Lines and Lyrics written by Matt BaileyShea and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-01 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to poetry geared toward the study of song "Fusing an approach that engages both lyrics and musical content of English-language songs in a wide swath of genres, Lines and Lyrics gives readers the tools and concepts to help them better interpret songs, in an accessible and enjoyable format."--Victoria Malawey, author of A Blaze of Light In Every Word: Analyzing the Popular Singing Voice "I can think of no other book that juxtaposes art song and pop song so effectively, in a way that doesn't privilege one over the other. This is a real achievement, and a must-have for anyone who loves words and songs."--Stephen Rodgers, University of Oregon Bruce Springsteen, Benjamin Britten, Kendrick Lamar, Sylvia Plath, Outkast, and Anne Sexton collide in this inventive study of poetry and song. Drawing on literary poetry, rock, rap, musical theater, and art songs from the Elizabethan period to the present, Matt BaileyShea reveals how every issue in poetry has an important corresponding status in song, but one that is always transformed. Beginning with a discussion of essential features such as diction, meter, and rhyme, the book progresses into the realms of lineation, syntax, form, and address, and culminates in an analysis of two complete songs. Throughout, BaileyShea places classical composers and poets in conversations with contemporary songwriters and musicians (T. S. Eliot and Johnny Cash, Aaron Copland and Pink Floyd) so that readers can make close connections across time, genres, and fields, but also recognize inherent differences. To aid the reader, the author has created a Spotify playlist of all the music discussed in this book and provides time cues throughout, enabling readers to listen to the music as they read.

Art Song

Author : Carol Kimball
Publisher : Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN 13 : 1480352527
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis Art Song by : Carol Kimball

Download or read book Art Song written by Carol Kimball and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Book). Art Song: Linking Poetry and Music is a follow-up to author Carol Kimball's bestselling Song: A Guide to Art Song Style and Literature . Rather than a general survey of art song literature, the new book clearly and insightfully defines the fundamental characteristics of art song, and the integral relationship between lyric poetry and its musical settings. Topics covered include poetry basics for singers, exercises for singers in working with poetry, insights into composers' musical settings of poetry, building recital programs, performance suggestions, and recommended literature for college and university classical voice majors. The three appendices address further aspects of poetry, guidelines for creating a recital program, and representative classical voice recitals of various descriptions. Art Song: Linking Poetry and Music is extremely useful as an "unofficial" text for college/university vocal literature classes, as an excellent resource for singers and voice teachers, and of interest to all those who are fascinated by the rich legacy of the art song genre.

City of Bones

Author : Kwame Dawes
Publisher : Northwestern University Press
ISBN 13 : 0810134632
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis City of Bones by : Kwame Dawes

Download or read book City of Bones written by Kwame Dawes and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-15 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As if convinced that all divination of the future is somehow a re-visioning of the past, Kwame Dawes reminds us of the clairvoyance of haunting. The lyric poems in City of Bones: A Testament constitute a restless jeremiad for our times, and Dawes’s inimitable voice peoples this collection with multitudes of souls urgently and forcefully singing, shouting, groaning, and dreaming about the African diasporic present and future. As the twentieth collection in the poet’s hallmarked career, City of Bones reaches a pinnacle, adding another chapter to the grand narrative of invention and discovery cradled in the art of empathy that has defined his prodigious body of work. Dawes’s formal mastery is matched only by the precision of his insights into what is at stake in our lives today. These poems are shot through with music from the drum to reggae to the blues to jazz to gospel, proving that Dawes is the ambassador of words and worlds.

Writing Better Lyrics

Author : Pat Pattison
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1599631660
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (996 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing Better Lyrics by : Pat Pattison

Download or read book Writing Better Lyrics written by Pat Pattison and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-12-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Must-Have Guide for Songwriters Writing Better Lyrics has been a staple for songwriters for nearly two decades. Now this revised and updated 2nd Edition provides effective tools for everything from generating ideas, to understanding the form and function of a song, to fine-tuning lyrics. Perfect for new and experienced songwriters alike, this time-tested classic covers the basics in addition to more advanced techniques.Songwriters will discover: • How to use sense-bound imagery to enhance a song's emotional impact on listeners • Techniques for avoiding clichés and creating imaginative metaphors and similes • Ways to use repetition as an asset • How to successfully manipulate meter • Instruction for matching lyrics with music • Ways to build on ideas and generate effective titles • Advice for working with a co-writer • And much more Featuring updated and expanded chapters, 50 fun songwriting exercises, and examples from more than 20 chart-toppings songs, Writing Better Lyrics gives you all of the professional and creative insight you need to write powerful lyrics and put your songs in the spotlight where they belong.

The Song Poet

Author : Kao Kalia Yang
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 1627794956
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis The Song Poet by : Kao Kalia Yang

Download or read book The Song Poet written by Kao Kalia Yang and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Latehomecomer, a powerful memoir of her father, a Hmong song poet who sacrificed his gift for his children's future in America In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses; extemporizing or drawing on folk tales, he keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning book The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father Bee Yang, the song poet, a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by American's Secret War. Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until, one day, a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has polished a life of poverty for his children, burnished their grim reality so that they might shine. Written with the exquisite beauty for which Kao Kalia Yang is renowned, The Song Poet is a love story -- of a daughter for her father, a father for his children, a people for their land, their traditions, and all that they have lost.

Song of My Softening

Author : Omotara James
Publisher : Alice James Books
ISBN 13 : 1948579480
Total Pages : 148 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (485 download)

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Book Synopsis Song of My Softening by : Omotara James

Download or read book Song of My Softening written by Omotara James and published by Alice James Books. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recommended by Cosmopolitan, USA Today, Shondaland, & Book Riot “It’s not often that fat women feel such thorough representation of themselves not only in poetry but in any media and not only in the beautiful moments but in the sorrowful ones, ranging throughout life. James does a brilliant job of portraying this and all her themes brilliantly; highly recommended.” —Starred review by Library Journal The raw poems inside Song of My Softening studies the ever-changing relationship with oneself, while also investigating the relationship that the world and nation has with Black queerness. Poems open wide the questioning of how we express both love and pain, and how we view our bodies in society, offering themselves wholly, with sharpness and compassion.

Song

Author : Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Publisher : BOA Editions, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 9781880238134
Total Pages : 100 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Song by : Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Download or read book Song written by Brigit Pegeen Kelly and published by BOA Editions, Ltd.. This book was released on 1995 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1994 Lamont Poetry selection of The Academy of American Poets. "Kelly has a talent for coaxing out the world's ghosts and then fixing them in personal landscapes of fear and uncertainty.... Smoothed by nuances of sound and rhythm, her poems exude an ambiguous wisdom, an acceptance of the sad magic that returns us constantly to the lives we might have led."--Library Journal

The Poetry of Pop

Author : Adam Bradley
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300165722
Total Pages : 425 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis The Poetry of Pop by : Adam Bradley

Download or read book The Poetry of Pop written by Adam Bradley and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A trailblazing exploration of the poetic power of popular songs, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles to Beyoncé and beyond. Encompassing a century of recorded music, this pathbreaking book reveals the poetic artistry of popular songs. Pop songs are music first. They also comprise the most widely disseminated poetic expression of our time. Adam Bradley traces the song lyric across musical genres from early twentieth-century Delta blues to mid-century rock 'n’ roll to today’s hits. George and Ira Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rhythm.” The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” These songs are united in their exacting attention to the craft of language and sound. Bradley shows that pop music is a poetry that must be heard more than read, uncovering the rhythms, rhymes, and metaphors expressed in the singing voice. At once a work of musical interpretation, cultural analysis, literary criticism, and personal storytelling, this book illustrates how words and music come together to produce compelling poetry, often where we least expect it.

FemPoetiks of American Poetry and Americana Music

Author : Linda Nicole Blair
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793621276
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis FemPoetiks of American Poetry and Americana Music by : Linda Nicole Blair

Download or read book FemPoetiks of American Poetry and Americana Music written by Linda Nicole Blair and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-10 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the poems of Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, and Emily Dickinson emerges what the author calls FemPoetiks, a discourse of female empowerment. Situating the work of these poets in their historical eras, Linda Nicole Blair considers a sampling of their poems side-by-side with a number of song lyrics by singer-songwriters Brandi Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens, and Lucinda Williams, having found commonalities of theme, motif, and language between them. Blair argues that while FemPoetiks has continued to develop in various ways in American poetry by women, the fact that this discourse finds expression in songs by Americana female artists indicates a matrilineal line of influence from the 1630s to today. In order to show the omnipresence of this powerful feminist discourse, she closes this book with eleven interviews she conducted with female singer-songwriters from around the United States. The phenomenon of FemPoetiks is not limited to the arts but extends into all areas of American life, from the domestic to the political. FemPoetiks is a woman’s truth.

From Song to Book

Author : Sylvia Huot
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501746685
Total Pages : 531 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis From Song to Book by : Sylvia Huot

Download or read book From Song to Book written by Sylvia Huot and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the visual representation of an essentially oral text, Sylvia Huot points out, the medieval illuminated manuscript has a theatrical, performative quality. She perceives the tension between implied oral performance and real visual artifact as a fundamental aspect of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century poetics. In this generously illustrated volume, Huot examines manuscript texts both from the performance-oriented lyric tradition of chanson courtoise, or courtly love lyric, and from the self-consciously literary tradition of Old French narrative poetry. She demonstrates that the evolution of the lyrical romance and dit, narrative poems which incorporate thematic and rhetorical elements of the lyric, was responsible for a progressive redefinition of lyric poetry as a written medium and the emergence of an explicitly written literary tradition uniting lyric and narrative poetics. Huot first investigates the nature of the vernacular book in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, analyzing organization, page layout, rubrication, and illumination in a series of manuscripts. She then describes the relationship between poetics and manuscript format in specific texts, including works by widely read medieval authors such as Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, and Guillaume de Machaut, as well as by lesser-known writers including Nicole de Margival and Watriquet de Couvin. Huot focuses on the writers' characteristic modifications of lyric poetics; their use of writing and performance as theme; their treatment of the poet as singer or writer; and of the lady as implied reader or listener; and the ways in which these features of the text were elaborated by scribes and illuminators. Her readings reveal how medieval poets and book-makers conceived their common project, and how they distinguished their respective roles.

Landscapes of the Song of Songs

Author : Elaine T. James
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190619031
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis Landscapes of the Song of Songs by : Elaine T. James

Download or read book Landscapes of the Song of Songs written by Elaine T. James and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this masterful new study of the ancient poetry of the Song of Songs, Elaine T. James explores the Song's underlying interest in the natural world. Engaging with the fields of geography, landscape architecture, and literature, James critiques the tendency of scholars to reify a perceived dichotomy between "nature" and "culture" and instead argues that the poetic attention to landscape indicates an awareness of a viewer. Nature is here a poetic device that informs James's close-readings of agrarianism, gardens, cities, social control, and feminism and the gaze in the Song. With this two-fold emphasis on landscape and lyric, Landscape of the Song of Songs shows how the Song persistently envisions a world in which human lovers are embedded in the natural world, complexly enfolded in relationships of fragility and care.

Lyrics

Author : Sting
Publisher : Dial Press
ISBN 13 : 0307421996
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Lyrics by : Sting

Download or read book Lyrics written by Sting and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2009-07-16 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the first Police album, Outlandos D'Amour, through Sacred Love, here are the collected lyrics written by Sting, along with his commentary. “Publishing my lyrics separately from their musical accompaniment is something that I’ve studiously avoided until now. The two, lyrics and music, have always been mutually dependent, in much the same way as a mannequin and a set of clothes are dependent on each other; separate them, and what remains is a naked dummy and a pile of cloth. Nevertheless, the exercise has been an interesting one, seeing perhaps for the first time how successfully the lyrics survive on their own, and inviting the question as to whether song lyrics are in fact poetry or something else entirely. And while I’ve never seriously described myself as a poet, the book in your hands, devoid as it is of any musical notation, looks suspiciously like a book of poems. So it seems I am entering, with some trepidation, the unadorned realm of the poet. I have set out my compositions in the sequence they were written and provided a little background when I thought it might be illuminating. My wares have neither been sorted nor dressed in clothes that do not belong to them; indeed, they have been shorn of the very garments that gave them their shape in the first place. No doubt some of them will perish in the cold cruelty of this new environment, and yet others may prove more resilient and become perhaps more beautiful in their naked state. I can’t predict the outcome, but I have taken this risk knowingly and, while no one in their right mind should ever attempt to set “The Waste Land” to music, in the hopeful words of T. S. Eliot, These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” —Sting, from the Introduction

Flood Song

Author : Sherwin Bitsui
Publisher : Copper Canyon Press
ISBN 13 : 1619321416
Total Pages : 90 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (193 download)

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Book Synopsis Flood Song by : Sherwin Bitsui

Download or read book Flood Song written by Sherwin Bitsui and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2016-06-13 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sherwin Bitsui's new poetry collection, Flood Song—a sprawling, panoramic journey through landscape, time, and cultures—is well worth the ride."—Poets & Writers “Bitsui’s poetry is elegant, probative, and original. His vision connects worlds.”—New Mexico Magazine “His images can tilt on the side of surrealism, yet his work can be compellingly accessible.”—Arizona Daily Star “Sherwin Bitsui sees violent beauty in the American landscape. There are junipers, black ants, axes, and cities dragging their bridges. I can hear Whitman's drums in these poems and I can see Ginsberg's supermarkets. But above all else, there is an indigenous eccentricity, ‘a cornfield at the bottom of a sandstone canyon,’ that you will not find anywhere else.”—Sherman Alexie Native traditions scrape against contemporary urban life in Flood Song, an interweaving painterly sequence populated with wrens and reeds, bricks and gasoline. Poet Sherwin Bitsui is at the forefront of a new generation of Native writers who resist being identified solely by race. At the same time, he comes from a traditional indigenous family and Flood Song is filled with allusions to Dine (Navajo) myths, customs, and traditions. Highly imagistic and constantly in motion, his poems draw variously upon medicine song and contemporary language and poetics. “I map a shrinking map,” he writes, and “bite my eyes shut between these songs.” An astonishing, elemental volume. I retrace and trace over my fingerprints Here: magma, there: shore, and on the peninsula of his finger pointing west— a bell rope woven from optic nerves is tethered to mustangs galloping from a nation lifting its first page through the man hole—burn marks in the saddle horn, static in the ear that cannot sever cries from wailing. Sherwin Bitsui’s acclaimed first book of poems, Shapeshift, appeared in 2003. He has earned many honors for his work, including fellowships from the Witter Bynner Foundation and Lannan Foundation, and he is frequently invited to poetry festivals throughout the world. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.