|
|
|
|
The American Poetry Review /Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry 2001 Winner
Ed Pavlic
Judged by
"To have found Ed Pavlic's Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue gave this
judge an infusion of hope. It's a fully conceived book, speaking as a whole
from the first lines to the last. What is in here belongs here, and what is
in here is consciously shaped. Mr. Pavlic has listened closely to our most
profound American art, the blues and jazz, and that music has not only
helped him achieve poetic form but allowed him to explore a mesh of
experience extraneous to literary theories. He is, doubtless, aware of such
theories, but the voices in his poems flow from a denser space, having
penetrated a denser reality, returning via the imagination and its many
discontents. In many of them, music and its creation/performance are
metaphorized into human relationships. This is intimate and soulful work,
breathing, brushing, or tonguing its instrument."
--Adrienne Rich, from the Foreward
"Ed Pavlic's Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue reveals and conceals in
skillful verbal play that owes much to its woven patterns. A contained,
structural improvisation focuses each poem in a white space underlying the
text--held like a mantra of boiled-down innuendo that is tinted with the
blues of jazz and literary-cultural folklore. We have to thank this poet
for his numerous down-to-earth surprises. However, we must also be willing
to travel as if locked inside the tonal tension of a Miles Davis ballad,
carried by something old made new."
--Yusef Komunyakaa
False Ceilings, from Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue
We punched thru & found Transbluency above our heads plaster dust from the archway new born fornix of the missing room dry mist in silken spirals gesso falls away like a silver lynx from bare shoulders ripple-cloud cream into coffee heavy aroma from a frost bouquet at the window inhales cool as lighter fluid & breath burns celestial burns a tektite cyclops eye opens into leaded feathers etched in a fine beveled pane
[Order books online] [Book Prize home]
|
