Bathing In The River Of Ashes: Poems (Western Literature Series) [Paperback]

Shaun T. Griffin (Author)

Book Description

Series: Western Literature Series | Publication Date: March 1, 1999

Shaun Griffin is a poet of impassioned engagement-in the common joys and suffering of the human experience, in the natural world, in the complexity of language and the poet's exacting craft. His vision embraces the vast possibilities of mankind's perseverance, from Somalia to Latin America, from Nevada's drab mining towns and prisons to the glittering Las Vegas Strip, and his voice is one of unflinching honesty and compassion. Yet Griffin's compelling poems are also rich in humor, sympathy, and images of unforgettable power and beauty-desert magpies circling a dead comrade, "with the last dry speech of family"; a newly released prisoner returning to freedom, who "breathed sky and bore no sadness." And in the title poem, an evocation of the turbulent life of the great Ganges River, he leaves us with an image of the pride and beauty of the poor, of "Women, thinned with pride," who "Walk / the streets that empty to homes . . . laughing, / with children in a wrinkle of quiet feet."

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

The second full-length volume by this Nevada-based poet, whos edited anthologies of regional literature, is itself part of the publishers Western Literature Series, and rightly so, since Griffin derives much of his inspiration from the landscape and people who live on the new western prairie where there are few wild things left. Solemn and mournful, Griffins plain verse bemoans the neon lights of Vegas, the porcine tourists, and laments the closed mines, the decline in agriculture, and the diminishing wilderness. A cabin built deep in the country (The Meyer Cabin, Jarbridge) is juxtaposed with more familiar sights: the blight of abandoned government bunkers (Hawthorne); burning tumbleweed along the desolate highway (Tumbleweeds and Toenails); and the parts of town better left to die (The New Western Prairie). Griffin strikes a more self-righteous tone in the second half of the book, a gallery of Steinbeck-like portraits that bleeds with its victims sufferings: a pregnant woman looking for work by the Vegas highway (Madonna in Traffic); an immigrant kitchen worker, far from his family (A Brown Man in the Kitchen); a stroke victim trying to work (Seems Im All Ive Got Anymore); and the hungry and working poor of Reno (Those People). When hes done mining the lives of Nevadas convicts and migrants, Griffin turns to a photograph of a child dying in the Sudan (This Is Not Loves Offering), or, in the title poem, imagines live and death on the Ganges River. A found poem in Ebonics just seems strange amid all the dreariness. Griffins lugubrious collection proves again that good intentions dont necessarily lead to good poetry. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

After Lunch At The Blueberry Cafe: Las Vegas, 1994
At The Old Santa Fe Club In Goldfield
At The River's Edge
Bathing In The River Of Ashes
Black English Vernacular
The Border Ink
A Brown Man In The Kitchen
Family
First And Last Things
First Cast, Late December, Pyramid Lake
Geiger Grade
Hawthorne
La Desterrada
Madonna In Traffic
Magpie Funeral
Manumission
The Meyer Cabin, Jarbidge
Nevada No Longer
The New Western Prairie
October In Battle Mountain
On The Death Of The Culture Dog, Nevada's Last Bookstore
Postscript To Chiapas
The Ring Of Chains
'seems I'm All I've Got Anymore'
The Somali Cab Driver Tells Of Ethnic Cleansing: Hart Senate Building
The Stonecutter
Tetherball
They Go Gathering Pine Nuts
This Is Not Love's Offering
Those People
Trash Run
Tumbleweeds And Toenails: Weed Abatement In Silver Springs
Until They Come Home
Visiting Day
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: University of Nevada Press (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874173310
• ISBN-13: 978-0874173314
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,292,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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