Synopses & Reviews
In his prize-winning debut collection, Ron Slate seeks out the intersections of art, technology, and humanity with intelligence, wit, and fervor. His unique voice is informed by his world travels as a business executive. As Robert Pinsky writes in his introduction, Slate brings together the personal and the global in a way that is distinctive, subtle, defying expectations about what is political and what is personal.” In Slate's words, "Is this the end of the world? / No just the end / of the language that describes it." Recently published in The New Yorker, Slate has been praised by James Longenbach for his ability to make the known world seem wickedly strange a poetry that is utterly of the moment, our moment, because it sounds like nobody else.”
About the Author
RON SLATE's previous collection, The Incentive of the Maggot, was chosen by Robert Pinsky to receive the 2004 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Poetry Prize. Slate's poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Three Penny Review, and TriQuarterly. He holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Stanford University and, after working in business communications for many years, he was chief operating officer of a life sciences start-up and recently launched a social network for family caregivers. He lives in Milton, MA with his wife.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Foreword by Robert Pinsky viii
I.
Writing Off Argentina 3
The Final Call 6
Belgium 8
Small Talk in Munich 10
The Demise of Camembert 12
Crow Menace in Tokyo 14
End of the Peacock Throne 16
Astride the Meridian 18
The Plan for Cyprus 20
II.
They Called Me 25
Shame 27
When I Returned 29
Light Fingers 31
After Long Silence 33
Hermaphrodite Endormi 35
Warm Canto 36
Essential Tremor 37
Granite City 39
Safe Passage 41
III.
Apparition of the Virgin 45
Monuments 47
The Watchman 50
The Incentive of the Maggot 52
One Firefly 55
"Ritorna-Me" 57
From the City of Refuge 59
What Was Normal 61
Tristia at Neap Tide 63
Turbulent Ferry,Evening 65
Notes 66
Acknowledgments 67