Awards
2008 Kingsley Tufts Award winner
Synopses & Reviews
Space Walk blasts off into realms of experience that show the imagination's limitless capacity to be both brutal and uplifting. While many of the poems in this daring collection confront head-on our current American realities of empire, state violence, the endless "crisis-chatter" of talking heads, and the eerie, weightless feeling of impending catastrophe, they are tethered to the gravitational pull of love and hope.
In Tom Sleigh's poems, rocket engines and pancake houses, space stations and mom's kitchen, terrorist organizations and Sundays in a museum are all part of love's intergalactic amplitude. As the poet writes in "After Netzsche": "In the face that must conceal / what is necessary / to bear / love appears in the face / of the face of what is necessary."
About the Author
Tom Sleigh is the author of seven collections of poetry. He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lila Wallace Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as numerous awards, including the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Award and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Hunter College.
Table of Contents
I Blueprint 3 Oracle 5 Space Station 9 Barbarian” 11 The Breeze 14 The Mouth 17 Invader 19 Necessity 22 Ice Trucker Pilgrimage: A Libretto 25 Chant 30 Betrayal 32 The Hole 36 Nobody 37 Drag Show 38 Tonight 40 After Nietzsche 43
II Last Broadcast 47 Premonition 49 Panel at the Press Club 51 Persian Miniature 52 Zoom 55 Ziggurat 56 Fable 57 Wall 59
III Song Beyond Reason 63 Afterlife 65 Clinic 68 Lullaby 70 To a Wasp on Fifth Avenue 72 Hammer 73 Song 75 The Flood 77 Inventory 79 Broken Ballad 81 Block and Bag 83 Archaic Figures 85 First Love 87 Discipline 88 Achilles Dream 91 Airport Economy Inn 96
Notes 101