A Desk in the Elephant House (Walt McDonald First-Book Series) [Hardcover]

Cathryn Essinger (Author), Robert A. Fink (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1998 | Series: Walt McDonald First-Book Series

"In a time when so many poets are out to unload the dead weight of their pasts on the reader, it is refreshing to read the work of Cathryn Essinger who realizes that before it can do anything else, poetry must give pleasure. Smart, sweetly crafted, and open-voiced, her poems are propelled not only by memory but by thought and wit. She is a poet after my own heart - and she has it." —Billy Collins "'One cannot help loving a mathematician,' Cathryn Essinger writes, and these poems shine with generous, tough love for the stubbornly individual people and things of this world. Both keen and gentle, mingling delight and grief, the poems investigate the strangeness of the familiar and draw us into their new, strangely familiar places. One can hardly help loving this book." —Jeff Gundy "Cathryn Essinger's first book of poems is a book of fulfillments. The poetry itself is filled—with both the quotidian and the near-miraculous, the close detail and a passional perspective. But filled, too, is the glowing sense of her stories, as they weave and loop throughout the collection, all within a single vital consciousness. The talkative, rich voice in the poems is also full, as in the figure of the cup." "Cathryn Essinger affirms the middle world, our familiar position between the worlds of intellect and sensation. We are small creatures 'digging skyward, pushing through the roots / of stars, chewing at the webbing of the universe' ('Ropes and Ladders'). Ours is a precarious adventure 'as we grope / for a hold on some steep cliff, hearing / only the whimper of ropes and lines / and the swish of the wind.' Here 'everything is bright / and properly placed.' Everything is familiar, so much the same ('Ropes and Ladders'). Light divides the darkness. We know our world and it is not waste and void. It is good."

Editorial Reviews

Review

Alice Reads To The Daffodils
Amniotic
Are You My Angel
Art History 121
As I Try To Explain, No Words Come Out
Biography
Blue Lakes And Scarlet Runners
Clearing The Garden
Coincidence
David
A Desk In The Elephant House
Double-winged Achenes
Drought
Dry Creek Bed
Eclipse
English 123 Discusses Virginia Woolf
Equinox
Fences
For My Brother, Reading Over My Shoulder
For Six Friends
Fourth Position, Grande Jete
Green Will
Growing Accustomed To Green
I Don't Remember Taking This Picture
In A Literary Voice
In A Winter Space
In These Paintings By David
The Intimacy Of Strangers
Ladders
Letter To Jerry
Lions
The Mathematician, Counting
Moon Garden
Morning News
Not To Reply
Not Understanding Hands
Nude On A Couch
On The Beach
Patching The Sky
Phases Of The Moon
The Philosophy Professor Discusses The Nature Of The Self-conscious..
A Response To Critics
Ropes And Ladders
Running
Talking To Flowers
To The Power Of The Air
Today The Starlings Are Listening To Brahms
The Top Of The Hill, Sels
Two Apples
Watercolor
You Are Right
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

About the Author

Cathryn Essinger teaches writing at Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and Yankee among other journals.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 70 pages
• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press (March 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896724018
• ISBN-13: 978-0896724013
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,981,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elephants, Virginia Woolf and the rest of the World, October 14, 2003

By 

Timothy G Suermondt (jamaica, new york United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Desk in the Elephant House (Walt McDonald First-Book Series) (Hardcover)

In the poem "The Mathematician, Counting" (from Cath-
yrn Essinger's terrific book 'A Desk in the Elephant House')
there's the line: "Such guts, such pizzaz!" Well, that pretty
much sums up the collection-- wonderfully strange and strange-
ly wonderful-- what a way she has for making the mundane spe-
cial (if you feel something the size of an elephant sitting
next to you, if you feel the power of the air sustaining the
life of birds or notice the Gorbachev's rummaging through the
lettuce at the grocery store("Are you my Angel?")-- welcome
to Essinger's world. Like Shakespeare, she knows that humor
(and wit)is serious business:

But at the end, when the software
fails and the radiation is rising,
I think that even an English major
will be resourceful enough to loop
the string of the window sash to the neck
of the coke bottle, balanced
to tap out some erratic Morse Code
to a world half annihilated
by the wonders of modern science.
ON THE BEACH

So, never mind deciding on a diet plan or whether to take
a vacation in Iceland or Malta, do something that will really
be worth it: Buy 'A Desk in the Elephant House'--the Muse will
thank you for your excellent taste.