The Sleep of Reason (Phoenix Poets)

The Sleep of Reason plunges us into a macabre world where good impulses bring on evil consequences—a world not unlike our own. In David Gewanter's alternately delightful and startling poems, allegory comes alive and stalks a bookstore's musty aisles, comedians eviscerate their families for a laugh, lovers love each other for withholding affection, and theaters collapse on audiences hungry for spectacle. Amidst such surreal subjects, Gewanter's delicate musicality and keen sense of humor sparkle; his inquisition regarding a fallen world becomes a dark comedy of errors haunted by the most unexpected characters—from JFK Jr. to Tacitus, Redd Foxx to General Motors, Mariah Carey to 100 rabbits with herpes. An offbeat satire for an off-kilter age, The Sleep of Reason offers an incisive guide to moral behavior in an immoral world.

David Gewanter, an associate professor of English at Georgetown University, is the author of In the Belly, which won the John C. Zacharis First Book award from Ploughshares magazine, and co-editor of The Collected Poems of Robert Lowell. He has received a Witter Bynner Fellowship and a Whiting Writers' Award.

Acknowledgments

I

A is for Allegory

See Saw

After the Wall

Gag

Jacopone: The Scissors

II

Cobbler's Children

Xenia: Stanger/Guest

Chai: 1924-2000

Tacitus: City of Unseens

Catullus VIII

One-Page Novel

Divorce and Mr. Circe

Marriage: Six Primers

Or What You Will

Zero-Account

Convolvulus, a Lullaby

Redd-Pound Slamma

A Lie-Awake Dirge

Revenger Sonnet

Jacopone: House

Y

Traffic of CReations

The Loop: JFK Jr

III

Jacopone: On the Cobbles

Hocus Pocus

Notes