Somewhere we'll leave the world : poems / by Russell Thorburn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thorburn, Russell, author.

Series:

Made in Michigan writers series

Standardized Title:

Poems. Selections

Language:

English

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

xi, 82 pages ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Somewhere we will leave the world : poems

Place of Publication:

Detroit, Michigan : Wayne State University Press, [2017]

Summary:

This book is for long walkers and dreamers who don't mind the cold or heat or the miles ahead. The reader is taken on a journey through snowy woods, stopping to confront a wolf or meet with Jim Harrison. The poems in Russell Thorburn's Somewhere We'll Leave the World are fluid and masterful with a flow that captures an authentic consciousness. These poems breathe and allow the reader breathing room. Powerful images and deft endings arrive like the best kind of emotional left hook-the kind that leaves you wanting more. In good company with the likes of Charles Bukowski and James Wright, Thorburn tips his hat to those who have come before him, while blazing his own winding and fantastical trail. Book jacket.

Contents:

I

Tracking the Wolf 1

The Butcher 2

The TV Guide as the Book of Job 3

The River He Swims 4

Many Miles from Home 6

Union Soldier, after Abandoning His Battle, Forgets Everything Wading through the Shallows 8

Ovation: Apollinaire, His Arm a Tremor at the Blackboard 9

Bad Men and Dirt 10

Scars 11

Sunday Jazz 12

Sergeant Reese Embraces the Suicide Bomber 13

Sergeant Reese's Letter to a Father 15

Reese's Letter to a Son 16

Sergeant Reese Loves to Box Away His Pain 18

II

Garage Band 21

Lately My Resemblance to Captain Beefheart Has Been Disturbing 22

Detroit, on the Bus Headed Downtown, the Driver Is Listening to Chopin's Preludes 23

Without Work 24

The Chinese Restaurant 25

Love Allows Us to Walk in the Sweet Music of Our Particular Heart 26

Weekend 27

Mr. MacLaverty Has a Pit Bull Named Roscoe 28

Across the Street from His House, a Boy, the Oldest of Sixteen, at His Father's Grave 29

Garage Band Records at Magic City 30

The Mountains Didn't Know I Was Playing a Piano 32

John Lennon on the Beach in the Upper Peninsula 33

Robbie Robertson Decides to Hitchhike Back to Canada 35

On a Bus Headed East on US 2 in a Late-Night Blizzard Years Ago 36

III

Gravitational Field 39

The Blind Guitarist Whose Six Strings Can Only Play Him So Far 41

Drawing Elena 43

Movie House 44

American Killer 45

When One Tugs at a Single Thing in Nature, He Finds It Attached to the Rest of the World 46

Hollywood 47

Walt Whitman Wears a Huge Hat in the Noonday Heat 49

John Huston Talks to Clark Gable about His Next Scene as a Drunk Falling Off a Car Hood 50

Broken 52

Winter Road All Bone, Miles Past Kiva, US 41 Headed North 54

IV

Marmalade 59

Billy the Kid Smells Cinnamon in Texas after a Bad Night 62

Expecting Someone to Come Walking through the Snow, Say, Jim Harrison 64

The Fox Was Chased 65

On a Bus Headed the Wrong Way in Watts 66

Richard Brautigan Wants to Walk Off the Cover of Trout Fishing in America 67

Dream House 68

At the Los Angeles Central Library 69

Electric Morning 71

Montgomery Clift Talks in That Slow, Rounded Way of Someone Desperately Drunk 72

Selective Service Decision to Defer Him after His Psychiatrist Wrote a Letter 73

When Lake Superior Remembers the North Sea 74

When I Was a Night Clerk Living with My Girlfriend at the Hotel 75

Your Table Peopled with Characters 77.

ISBN:

9780814342541

081434254X

OCLC:

974459354