Nothing for it but to sing : poems / Michael Harlow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harlow, Michael, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

New Zealand poetry--21st century.

New Zealand poetry.

Genre:

New Zealand poetry -- 21st century.

Poetry.

Physical Description:

63 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Dunedin, New Zealand : Otago University Press, 2016.

Summary:

Michael Harlows poems are small detonations that release deeply complex stories of psychological separations and attractions, of memory and desire. Frequently they slip into the alluring spaces just at the edges of language, dream and gesture, as they carefully lower, like measuring gauges, into the ineffable: intimations of mortality, the slippery nature of identity, longing, fear. Harlow is a poet with such a command of music, the dart and turn of movement in language, that he can get away with words that make us squirm in apprentice workshops or bad pop songs heart, soul and make them seem newly shone and psychically right. The work is sequined by sound, rather than running its meaning along the rigid rails of metre and end rhyme. The sway and surge of various meanings in the phrasing, and the way sense trails and winds over line breaks: this movement itself often evokes the alternating dark and electric energy of feelings like love, loss and the pain of absence. This is a beautifully honed new collection.

Contents:

`Nothing for it but to sing'

Short talk on spring with fantails

Forgetting to remember

The family at last

Short talk on hats

`Not love's fault nor time's'

Let's do it

Reflections: in the wider world

1. We look to listen

2. The oldest tree in the garden

3. Listening

4. Arid out of the keepsake box

5. This morning the colour of steel

6. Eclipsed

7. Each night he tried to make a go

8. How this fossil-stone slips

9. I'm always surprised

10. Curtain riser

11. Boustrophedon

12. In that high place

Her words

The night-watch, making the rounds

Aftershock

`Not in our stars'

No full stops in heaven

The late news

Post mortem on promises 33 Cage-masters, their want

Hidden hurts

Beyond

Then there's a pair of us

When no birds sang

Bite the bright coin its brilliance

Hidden things

Eating the silence

Above and below

The discovery of morning

Arriving at Delphi

Take five: composition for words and music

This is your birthday

Inventory

The invitation

The holiness of attention

Matrimonial, on a train

A deeper call

Miss Jones in Haberdashery

Last post

The company of mapmakers

The piano's birthday

Notes and Acknowledgements

Also by Michael Harlow.

ISBN:

9781927322628

1927322626

OCLC:

971499003