Playful song called beautiful : poems / by John Blair.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blair, John, 1961- author.

Series:

Iowa poetry prize

Iowa Poetry Prize

Standardized Title:

Poems. Selections

Language:

English

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

ix, 94 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, [2016]

Summary:

Playful Song Called Beautiful ranges far into the intersections of faith and scientific thought, places where "there is no stranger who is / stranger than yon, no / familiar who's more / familiar." In poems that are either formally rhymed and metered or written in syllabically structured three-line stanzas, Blair wanders among universal orders and failures of desire, where the unlikeliness of any of us being who we are, what we are, where we are forces us to consider-and reconsider-the possibilities of belief and meaning. Blair's poems are elegant and earthy, sometimes profane, and sometimes lovingly playful. Book jacket.

Contents:

How to Know Two 1

Dirt 2

To a Girl Walking Away From the British Museum 5

The Idle Hours 7

Blue Moon 10

The Horse 14

A Philosophy of Gravity 15

Disagreeable Things 17

The One Thing 19

What Happens to the Future 22

The Truth You Heard 25

Sleeping Dogs Lie 26

Goethe's Apple 28

Three Quarks for Muster Mark 32

A Song on Geronimo's Grave 37

The Law of the Excluded Middle 43

Hard Pearl 45

The Lesser Poet 46

And Yet It Moves 48

Playful Song Called Beautiful 50

The Lost Children 51

The Thing Itself Speaks 53

What We Want 56

Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit 58

Evil Pockets 64

Desirada 69

The Ghosts of Birds 71

Why You Leave 72

If I Should Die Before I Wake 73

The Gift 74

What Happens When You Stop 76

What is Left 77

Dog Dreams 78

Mésalliance Grotesque 79

Turing Lies with Men 81

Blood Rain at Stoke Edith 83

Here Where We Are Terrible 86

The Things You Can't Keep 90

Shooting Dove 94.

ISBN:

9781609383992

1609383990

OCLC:

924637570