Brian Swann’s Autumn Road consists of three interrelated parts: "ghosts/on paper, anonymous, ambiguous, festive—," from the viewpoint of someone "similar to/who I am, but not me." There should be no "mistaking flashes" for "heliography." This poem, "Heliography" and other in Part I, "The Lost Boy," is set during and after World War II in Northumberland, England, a world of farm, coal mine, family and relatives. Later, in adolescence, the scene moves to the fen country of East Anglia and focuses on a difficult father and a violent world. Part II centers on "Ars Amatoria" in its various manifestations: marriage, the family and children. Part III, Eschatology," looks back but also forward. It moves through middle age to "Three Score and Then Some." What it sees is "the River Jordan spreading across night sands," friends and family no longer here. It ends with the title poem, set in New York’s western Catskill Mountains: "I look for ecstatic image/here below where the year is dying fiercely.
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Editorial Reviews
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"Brian Swann creates places, beings, and events that represent the forms of sympathy and doubt in action." -- Hayden Carruth
"Imagine D. H. Lawrence writing with a sense of humor, and you’ll have an idea of Swann’s rich, memoir poems." -- Ploughshares
"Mr. Swann’s subject is history, past and as a dimension of the present, caught in the perspective of language." -- William Merwin
"These accessible poems startle and amaze with their erudition and fierce insistence on making the new world newer still." -- David Citino
"Imagine D. H. Lawrence writing with a sense of humor, and you’ll have an idea of Swann’s rich, memoir poems." -- Ploughshares
"Mr. Swann’s subject is history, past and as a dimension of the present, caught in the perspective of language." -- William Merwin
"These accessible poems startle and amaze with their erudition and fierce insistence on making the new world newer still." -- David Citino
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5.0 out of 5 stars
An eccentric and inspiring collection of the intuitive poet Brian Swann and his most uncompromisingly vivid works,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: AUTUMN ROAD (OSU JOURNAL AWARD POETRY) (Paperback)
Autumn Road is an eccentric and inspiring collection of the intuitive poet Brian Swann (Professor of Humanities at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, New York) and his most uncompromisingly vivid works. The Star: You're writing down next spring's/garden: beans, tomatoes, squash/and so on. Outside, snow sticks everywhere,/clogging everything up, hemming//You in. When don you pick up/the newspaper. In the obits/there's always someone you know./The come and go, and you never//Quite get used to it. Walking/slowly downstairs you call/to your wife: How about a game/of cards? OK. She shuffles, deals,//Lifts her head. Look, she says,/That huge star. I've never seen/anything like it before. It looks like,/who knows. You turn and see it,//Whiter than snow, insistent as stone./Imagine, she says, what a place/like that must be./And drops her hand.
5.0 out of 5 stars
An eccentric and inspiring collection of the intuitive poet Brian Swann and his most uncompromisingly vivid works,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: AUTUMN ROAD (OSU JOURNAL AWARD POETRY) (Paperback)
Autumn Road is an eccentric and inspiring collection of the intuitive poet Brian Swann (Professor of Humanities at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, New York) and his most uncompromisingly vivid works. The Star: You're writing down next spring's/garden: beans, tomatoes, squash/and so on. Outside, snow sticks everywhere,/clogging everything up, hemming//You in. When don you pick up/the newspaper. In the obits/there's always someone you know./The come and go, and you never//Quite get used to it. Walking/slowly downstairs you call/to your wife: How about a game/of cards? OK. She shuffles, deals,//Lifts her head. Look, she says,/That huge star. I've never seen/anything like it before. It looks like,/who knows. You turn and see it,//Whiter than snow, insistent as stone./Imagine, she says, what a place/like that must be./And drops her hand.
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