Synopses & Reviews
The critically acclaimed poet and translator Brooks Haxton embraces life, from our naked beginnings to the first signs of middle age and beyond, in this inviting collection of poems. The book opens with the dramatic birth of twins, and speaks in the intimate voice of a husband, father, and poet. Diverse products of the imagination pass through Haxtons generous mindthe mysterious number zero, Miltons “Lycidas,” nuclear technologyeven as he captures the humor and pathos of the everyday. In these brief, exquisite lyrics, meditations, and short stories in verse, he immerses his reader in the heat of teenage rivalry and friendship, the tender comedy of sex, and the amazements of the natural world. Here, from a book indelible in its language and feeling, are the last few lines:
My daughters my twin girls say Ba for bird
for book for bottleBa: in Egypt,
bird with a human head, the soul.
They wake and wake their mother. Ba!
They point into the dark. Ba, Ba! they say,
and back to nursing weary in her arms.
Synopsis
As its title suggests, this book embraces everything basic in our existence, from our naked beginnings (the book opens with the birth of the poet's twin daughters), to our attempts to master our world with mathematics, poetry, and other products of the human consciousness. It contains long poems that are virtually short stories in verse -- "Teenage Ikon" is about the inevitable trouble when best friends fight over a girl -- and brief, elegant lyrics the reader will memorize instantly.
Haxton is unembarrassed to write tender love poems, but he has a sense of humor about himself. See the poem "Author's Bio, " which begins, "Son of a Maori priestess and a Tasmanian pirate, / Brooks Haxton at two was thrown as a human sacrifice / from the gunwale of a careening brig..." Readers should delight in his sparkling reflections on friendship, nature, sex, marriage, and perception.
About the Author
Brooks Haxton, born in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1950, is the son of the novelist Ellen Douglas and the composer Kenneth Haxton. He has published three previous collections of poetry, two book-length narrative poems, and two books of translations from the ancient Greek. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation, Haxton teaches in the writing programs at Syracuse University and Warren Wilson College. He lives in Syracuse with his wife and three children.