No second Eden : poems / Turner Cassity.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cassity, Turner.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

65 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Athens : Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, [2002]

Summary:

If you think that Turner Cassity has mellowed or slowed down since the 1998 release of his selected poems, The Destructive Element, think again. In No Second Eden Cassity is back more Swiftian than ever. Among the targets reduced to ruin are countertenors, parole boards, the French Symbolists, calendar reformers, the Yale Divinity School, and the cult of Elvis. Without turning a blind eye, he even extends a toast to Wernher von Braun. Surprisingly, there is a poem about the Missisippi in which Cassity grew up. Unsurprisingly, it is a vision quite unlike others of that state. Its chilly and amusing precision is about as far from Southern Gothic as you can get, although elsewhere there are faint hints of a failed Good Ole Boy. Indeed, the final poems in the collection are a bit more personal than one expects of this writer. As rigorous in form as they are in feeling, the poems in this collection are not for those with preconceived ideas of poetry or its purpose. Early in Cassity's career, James Merrill described Cassity's work as "an opera house in the jungle." True so far as it goes, but he might also have called it the jungle in the opera house: a glimpse at the savagery behind every facade.

Contents:

A Member of the Mystik Krewe 1

The Metrist at the Operetta 2

Stylization and Its Failures 3

WTC 4

Cities of the Plain and Fancy 6

Not to Seize the Moment 8

Transpositions 9

Aurora Borealis of the Inner Eye 11

The Creatures of Prometheus 13

Uses of Hot Air 15

Junkerdom in Huntsville 17

Distant Early Warning 19

The Dueling Scar 20

Karl and Julius and Gregory, or, Are You a Fructidor? 21

Sonar Readings 22

Now You See It, Now You Don't 23

A Diamond Is Forever 25

Oysters and Other Workers 27

Smile Please 28

Adam with a Garden Hose 29

Let My People Go, but not without Severance Pay 30

Manual vs. White Collar 31

Program Notes for an Orgy 33

In the Matter of Graven Images 34

Sensitivity Training: The Safecracker 35

J. P. Morgan 37

Neckties 38

A Different Perspective on A Rebours 39

Favorites 43

Crime and Punishment 45

Boxcar Arthur and Other Myth 47

Boxcar Arthur, the Sequel 49

Enola Gay Rights 52

The Second-Guesser 53

Estate Planning 55

I Dreamed Last Night I Went Again to Manderley 56

Victory 57

In the Receiving Line 58

Venerations 59

Hanging On 60

Why Geriatrics Are Not Sacrificed 61

Watching the Stopwatch Stopping 62

The Ultimate National Monument 63

The Grateful Minimalist 64.

ISBN:

0804010501

080401051X

OCLC:

49617545