Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 2014 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye Inspired by thrift store knit sleeves, punk rock record sleeves, and, of course, print book sleeves, Angela Sorby explores how the concrete world hails us in waves of color and sound. She asks implicitly, What makes the sleeve wave? Is it the body or some force larger than the self?” As Sorbys tough, ironic, and subtly political voice repeatedly insists, we apprehend, use, and release more energy than we can possibly control. This collection includes two main partsone visual, one auralflanking a central pastoral poem sung by Virgilian sheep. Meant to be read both silently and aloud, the poems in The Sleeve Waves meditate on how almost everythinglike light and soundcomes to us in waves that break and vanish and yet continue.
Review
“The wise poems of a fire-walker.”—Marilyn Nelson
Review
Sometimes, if youre very patient and a little lucky, a set of truly original poems will jolt you upright again, and you will read their unexpected, eccentric turns, their mesmerizing content and cadence, with gratitude and amazement and feel so glad youre still alive.”Naomi Shihab Nye, Felix Pollak Prize judge
Review
Angela Sorbys poems move quickly, yet they contain depths: theres a new world floating / behind the painting, as one says. If happiness lurks beneath sadness and vice versa, thats the point: these supple, savvy poems say the world is richer than we know and infinitely more beautiful.”David Kirby
Review
Has anyone written a funnier, more terrifying poem about Sylvia Plath than Epistle? Or caught the delicate complexities among generations better than A Walk on the Ice? From Seattle to Wisconsin to Hunan, these poems register the inscape and soundscape of a mind both ferocious and generous.”Maureen McLane
Synopsis
Bird Skin Coat is brimming with startling moments of beauty found within a rusty and decayed landscape. With wild lyrical images of ascent and descent—doves and dives, sparrows and slugs, attics and cellars—this collection reflects Sorby’s keen eye for blending images. As they shuttle between the Upper Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, these poems explore how the radical instability of the world is also the source of its energy.
Synopsis
Bird Skin Coat is brimming with startling moments of beauty found within a rusty and decayed landscape. With wild lyrical images of ascent and descent—doves and dives, sparrows and slugs, attics and cellars—this collection reflects Sorby’s keen eye for blending images.
Synopsis
Winner of the 2014 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry Angela Sorbys aural, accessible poems meditate on the sensory worldsound, light, chords, colorreaching us in waves that break and vanish and yet continue.
About the Author
Angela Sorby is an associate professor of English at Marquette University. She is the author of three books:
Distance Learning: Poems;
Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry; and
Bird Skin Coat, winner of the 2009 Brittingham Prize in Poetry.
Table of Contents
Part One
Bird Skin Coat
Breathing Out Smoke
Nostalgia for the Present
Rose
Whose Woods These Are
Neighborhood Watch
Small Talk
Middle Distance
Erin's Leather Jacket
Dragons of the Bible
Walking Directions
What Helen Caught
Catch and Release
Conversion Narrative
Mountain of Names
The Snow-Woman
The Diagnosis
Insomnia
Part Two
Kickflip
The Attic of the Attic
Prosperity
Flyover State
Taj Mahal
American Camel
Sky Falling on Cedars
Sleeping with Stars
Forest Floor
Sleeping in the Pioneer Rooms
Objects Made Real by Observation
Night Train to Whitefish
In the Good Pain Wing
Six Degrees of Separation
Transport to Sumer
Museum Study
First Lady of the War
Dove and Dove
The Urn