Now we're getting somewhere / David Clewell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clewell, David, 1955-2020.

Series:

Felix Pollak prize in poetry.

The Felix Pollak prize in poetry

Language:

English

Physical Description:

ix, 85 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, [1994]

Summary:

David Clewell's graceful, honest lines accumulate and remind us that poems can be as tangible, as substantial, as redemptive as those things the poet will not let go unspoken in the world. His compassionate witness is born out of immersion in doggedly bittersweet particulars: the cockeyed wisdom of 1950s science fiction movies; Do Not Disturb signs; vegetarian physics; the perils of bed-and-breakfast lodging; flying saucer disciples; what to do in case of Rapture; Debbie Fuller, reluctant childhood angel; the theory and practice of Spontaneous Human Combustion. His passionate transformation of that raw data into song -- no matter how fragile or raucous -- provides irrefutable testimony about the consequences of being nothing less than human, where "every day someone crawls out of his ocean of sleep / and takes those first tottering steps on the planet again, / he's playing with real fire." And with Clewell's insistence on the unlikely grace in that condition, along with the generosity of his unabashed inclusiveness, his poetry is a powerful antidote to the bad medicine we're too often asked to swallow.

This is a book of sustenance, of fresh assurances that come to us -- ready or not -- out of the blue of this spirited poet's most engaging work yet.

Contents:

I. Fresh Out of Dreams

If the Wisdom Holds 3

Do Not Disturb 5

Holding On 8

America's Bed-and-Breakfasts 10

From the Other Side, Houdini Tries to Come Through for Bess 13

II. The Protocol of Desire

The Anatomy of Wishful Thinking 19

What Some People Won't Do 22

But Seriously 24

The Final Meeting of the Pessimists Club 27

She Dreamed She Was Writing a Love Poem 30

Lessons in Another Language 33

Vegetarian Physics 36

I Can't Believe the Face on Mars 37

III. Lost in the Fire

i. A Starter Kit 43

ii. A Royal Fairy Tale 45

iii. What a Town, What a Woman, What a Time 46

iv. All That Represents Him 48

v. Ladybug, Fly Away Home 51

vi. Trying to Make Light of It 53

vii. Billy and the Saints 54

viii. His Side of the Story 57

ix. Long Day at the Beach 59

x. Where There's Smoke 62

IV. In the Boondocks of What's Possible

Why Certain Poets Have No Business at the Track 67

The Humming 69

Goodbye Note to Debbie Fuller: Pass It On 72

Carnival Heaven 75

In Case of Rapture 78

A Long Way from the Starlight 82.

ISBN:

0299144100 :

0299144143

OCLC:

30318907