Underdays / Martin Ott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ott, Martin, 1966-

Series:

Ernest Sandeen prize in poetry ; 2015.

Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry series

Standardized Title:

Poems. Selections

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (74 p.)

Place of Publication:

Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"We encounter many voices in life: from friends and family, from media, from co-workers, from other artists. In a highly connected global world, where people and entities are electronically enmeshed, we filter these voices constantly to get to what we determine to be the truth. Taking inspiration from pop culture, politics, art, and social media, Martin Ott mines daily existence as the inspiration and driving force behind Underdays. Underdays is a dialogue of opposing forces: life/death, love/war, the personal/the political. Ott combines global concerns with personal ones, in conversation between poems or within them, to find meaning in his search for what drives us to love and hate each other. Within many of the poems, a second voice, expressed in italic, hints at an opposing force "under" the surface, or multiple voices in conversation with his older and younger selves--his Underdays--to chart a path forward. What results is a poetic heteroglossia expressing the richness of a complex world. "In Martin Ott's new book of poems, Underdays, there's nature, children, desire, war, and Los Angeles, but everything is shrouded with the speaker's experiences as an interrogator in the military--an institution that leaves nothing untouched, even Ott's haunting and dark poetry. But more importantly, Ott's poetry is sonically beautiful and written with such a skilled hand--a hand that was meant to write the poetry of a gifted and haunted soul." --Victoria Chang, author of The Boss "-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

""Contents""; ""Acknowledgments""; ""The Interrogator in Retirement""; ""Mystery Spot""; ""Survivor's Manual to Love and War""; ""Cloud Writing""; ""The City of Tomorrow""; ""The Naked Boy on the Famous Album Cover""; ""Battlefield Typewriter ""; ""Love Advice from a Twenty-Sided Die""; ""View from Within""; ""Why I Don't Set the Clock on my Car""; ""Craters of the Moon""; ""Midlife Man""; ""Mad Libs for Interrogators""; ""The Old Zoo""; ""Caves of Los Angeles""; ""High Above the Airport""; ""Soldiers in the Dark""; ""Ring Finder""; ""Refrain""; ""Why I Don't Carry an Umbrella""

""Houses of Straw""""Mad Libs for Lovers""; ""The Intention of Knees""; ""The Lost Film of Kim Jong-Il""; ""The Book of Secret Players""; ""The Last to Flee the Wildfires""; ""Ink Quake""; ""Angel Blue""; ""Man Lost on a Mountain Trail""; ""Audition""; ""What is Left""; ""Collecting People""; ""Blanket Party""; ""Lot's Lips""; ""Movie Star Girlfriend""; ""Mad Libs for Politicians""; ""Diplomacy""; ""Ghosts of Hollywood""; ""War Wounds""; ""The Subject of my First Childhood Poem Revisited""; ""Upon Examining the Newly Hatched Chick that Flew Around the World""; ""113 Degrees of Separation""

""Steps""""Bookmarks""; ""Fruits of Labors""; ""Goodnight""; ""Notes""

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780268158187

0268158185

9780268088699

0268088691

OCLC:

918993013