From the Bones Out (James Dickey Contemporary Poetry) [Hardcover]

Marisa de los Santos (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"My lover tells me I am like this place./ I tell him what I miss: the slap of leaves/ on skin and air that's like a damp embrace." The poems of this debut have a Cinderella-like innocence, transforming ugliness into beauty and waving the wand of well-crafted metaphor over all they encounter. The horrific suicide of a grandfather, a mother's cancer, the mourning for a stillborn child, the potential foreclosure of a neighbor's farm are all recounted with a refined clarity. Yet through it all, de los Santos manages to frame life's traumas with a voice that can seem borrowed from the Stage Manager in Our Town: "Some years/ were fair, but most were bad./ The taxes, worse than weevil, tried/ to take each dime she had." However, there are also poems, such as "Io's Gift," that evoke, through their subtlety and sensuality, the pleasures of the ever-changing consciousness of the female body: "I learned myself, bit/ by bit, or maybe I/ should say I dawned/ upon myself, a slow dawning." There are also glamorous poems, including "Supermodel," and "Perfect Dress," in which the poet indulges in herself as an object of perfect beauty: "Someone will murmur,/ `She is sublime,'/ will be precisely right, and I will step,/ with incandescent shoulders,/ into my perfect evening." In its worked simplicity, this is a first book that offers a formula of hope and clarity when confronting life's trials and tribulations. (Apr.)

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

After
Amagansett
Armadillo Epithalamium
Ars Poetica For Intemperate Climates
Because I Love You
Bible Stories
Big Bend
Embodiment
Enough
Family Plots
The Fern
First Light
For A Stillborn
For Susan
For Tia Josefina
Heaven
Housework
'i Knew A Woman':she Responds
Inverse Epiphany In A Neiman Marcus Dressing Room
Io's Gift
Land
Lucille
Luray Caverns: The Discovery
Milagros Mourns The Queen Of Scat
Monologue Of One Returned
Most Of What I Have
October: One Year Later
Oil
Oregon
Perfect Dress
Poem For A Birthday
Remission
Supermodel
Tea
Wiglaf
Woman Reading
Women Watching Basketball
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Hardcover: 90 pages
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press (April 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570033226
• ISBN-13: 978-1570033223
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,542,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I became a writer because I love the sound and texture of words (current favorite consonant sounds: Ls and hard Cs) and love to hear what happens when they bump up against each other. I was a poet for a long time (my first book is a collection of poetry called FROM THE BONES OUT), and then, one day, unexpectedly, I found that I had a voice inside my head. As you might imagine, this was a bit alarming. However, in time, I discovered that the voice belonged to a character named Cornelia Brown, so I wrote a novel called LOVE WALKED IN about her and an eleven-year old girl named Clare. After that, I became addicted to writing novels. I wrote a second one called BELONG TO ME, and my third, FALLING TOGETHER, came out on October 4th, 2011. I'm now working on a fourth, tentatively titled THE PRECIOUS ONE. I live with my husband, children's book author David Teague, and our two kids, Charles and Annabel, in lovely Wilmington, Delaware, home of Vice President Biden and tax-free shopping.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deft Grace, June 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: From the Bones Out (James Dickey Contemporary Poetry) (Paperback)

Lightness and grace permeate the words in this book. Throughout, the reader can sense a warm heart and compassionate eye. A joy to read for observations on family, on history, on nostalgia, on desire...the poems create a beautiful presence and experience for the attentive reader. I thank the poet for her words.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grace, Lightness and Movement, too, July 6, 2000

By 

Victor Velasco - See all my reviews

This review is from: From the Bones Out (James Dickey Contemporary Poetry) (Paperback)

Octavio Paz said once that to read a poem is to let "words enter through our ears, appear before our eyes, disappear in contemplation." This is what Marissa de los Santos offered us. And in its various incarnations. In her poems, the writer also allows the words to enter our eyes, appear in contemplation and to never disappear from within.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars from the bones out, September 24, 2000

By 

Julianna Baggott (Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From the Bones Out (James Dickey Contemporary Poetry) (Paperback)

These are rare, beautiful poems. Her images breathtaking. I love this book.