A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire / Andrew S. Nicholson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nicholson, Andrew S. (Andrew Snyder)

Series:

Mountain west poetry series.

Mountain West poetry series

Standardized Title:

Poems. Selections

Language:

English

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (87 p.)

Place of Publication:

Fort Collins, Colorado : Center for Literary Publishing/Colorado State University, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Opening the space between the ordinary and the visionary, the poems in A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire uncover an intimate relationship with the world around them, from Las Vegas to Italy to the American Midwest. From a lime glowing in an orchard to a miraculous childhood attempt at levitation, Andrew S. Nicholson's poems ground themselves in the commonplace and leap for the luminous. Central to this collection are poems that retell stories of Jacob from the Old Testament, relocated behind casinos, glimpsed in miniature on kitchen floors, and heard speaking in a moment of decay. Through these retellings, Nicholson examines the creation of self, family relationships, and a generative sense of the divine"-- Provided by publisher.

""In Andrew S. Nicholson's A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire, what is most alive is color, that which gives itself freely, generously: 'Follow the hopeful as they green the day' ('My Garage Fills with an Ever-Increasing Number of Dandelions'). Threaded throughout with Genesis, wherein Jacob wrestles an angel, this gorgeous debut collection builds a ladder firmly rooted here: in sun and earth; in varying and multiple shades of orange; in trials of father and son; in books and paintings; in abandoned casinos; in countries far from home; and/or in the sound of a door closing. Nicholson's poems come from a man standing by himself, in what George Oppen called the 'shipwreck of the singular,' which includes everybody. I'm moved by the luminous generosity, the moral clarity of this work. A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire is news that will stay news." --Claudia Keelan, author of The Devotion Field, Missing Her, and O, Heart "'Who doesn't nurse a secret love?' asks Andrew S. Nicholson in visionary poems that reveal secret worlds cradled inside this one. Whether considering the casinos of Las Vegas, a fresco in Pompeii, or scenes from the Hebrew Bible, the poet endures one of desire's more fraught paradoxes: its unchanging ability to bring change, to turn the known into the unknown. These poems bravely attend to such transformations the way Jacob--the book's patron saint--wrestles with the angel, 'lifting all the flesh / that he can lose.' I admire this poet who knows that blessing doesn't arrive without loss, who remembers 'I was loved once. / Beneath that love, a kindness took root.' The same sweet feeling lingers long after this book is closed. Dear reader: savor it." --Brian Teare "Andrew S. Nicholson's A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire is a gorgeous book. His graceful, playful poems enchant us ('I try to make out the stranger's face, but he's shrinking: / a melting gray blur, an ever-smaller thorn.') and transform us ('Sink into the bathwater, any way is a way / to journey toward that joining'). Nicholson has become one of the great poets of a new and radical kind of pastoral." --Joseph LeaseOpening the space between the ordinary and the visionary, the poems in A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire uncover an intimate relationship with the world, from Las Vegas to Italy to the American Midwest. From a lime glowing in an orchard to a miraculous childhood attempt at levitation, Andrew S. Nicholson's poems ground themselves in the commonplace and leap for the luminous. Central to this collection are poems that retell stories of Jacob from the Old Testament, relocated behind casinos, glimpsed in miniature on kitchen floors, and heard speaking in a moment of decay. Through these retellings, Nicholson examines the creation of self, family relationships, and a generative sense of the divine"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

1

Lime

A Miniature Jacob Wrestles on My Kitchen Floor

Her Fingers Split the Orange

Father Isaac and Jacob Live in a House Behind Circus Circus

To Las Vegas

Jacob at Penuel

Her Father Sewed the Stuffed Tigers Tear

Levitation

Feeding of the Five Thousand

The Burning Bush

Fathers

Fire Destroys the Shuttered Key Largo Casino

The Worlds Oldest Wrestler Dreams He is a Weathered Stone, Which Dreams It is a Statue

Mojave Desert

The Suns Orange Detaches Itself and Addresses the Sun

Friedrich Holderlin, IM Listening

Why You, Pierre Bonnard?

Vaudeville After the Multitude

Jacobs Ladder as the Two Arms He Wrestled

The Casino Financier Takes a Moment for Himself

Candlelit

By First Light

Night Next and Three Stars

2

Answering Questions in Sapphos Poetry

The Beak of the Plague Doctor

Introduction to Classical Mythology

Aesop

Ovid Writes from His Exile in Tomis

Onion

In a Pompeian Fresco, a Snake Tells His History to a Fig Tree

Christian Eschatology in the Pagan World

Among Daphne and Apollo in Venice

3

After Crossing the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Ontario, the Huron

Ladder

I Am a New Person. I Am New.

Before Esau Hugs Jacob

The Petoskey Stones Apocalypse of Saint Dominic

My Grandmothers Breath

Now Nameless

Joseph Tells Jacob His First Dream

Exit Strategy

Apocalypse With Lines from Julian of Norwich

What Comes to My Aid

To the Robin-Headed Man I Saw Walking His Dog Yesterday

This Must be the Afterlife of Birds

Voice I Overheard While Shopping for Hybrid Lilies

My Garage Fills with an Ever-Increasing Number of Dandelions

Letter to the Next Person I Meet

Notes

Acknowledgements

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (page 75).

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781457197130

1457197138

9781885635464

188563546X

OCLC:

925478522