From Publishers Weekly
Gery's first collection is as richly contradictory as "the spirit, the American ghost" that his poems give shape to. The ideals of "those cowboys of whom we are/ so proud" seem both celebrated and duly exorcised. The question "What Are Chores?" becomes a meditation on timelessness and idleness; throughout, images from middle-American life may appear as subversive hallucinations. Adding depth to the frame-by-frame panorama is Gery's frequent, subtle use of traditional meters and forms (in particular, iambic pentameter and rhymed quatrains), rendering an edgy, hard-won elegance to the lines. The struggle between leisure and work is examined through layers of old-fashioned lyricism, political metaphor and real-life contexts; this tension can, as is suggested in "Pandora's Gift," be cause for wry rejoicing: "...And what of us, if from the first/ our evil had been ordinary,/ our songs not beautiful, our hearts not cursed?"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Afterthought
American Ghost
Anti-hemingway
The Arbitrary Edge
A Bad Performance But My Own
The Barracuda
Being And Tire
Dark Horse
Death In Various Parts: 1
Death In Various Parts: 2
Death In Various Parts: 3
Deep South
A Duty To Dejection
The Enemies Of Leisure
The Fat Lady At The Liquor Store
First Music
For Sally Ann, Wherever She Is, In Alabama
For The People Of Lesbos
The Game Of The Week
A Great Woolly Mammoth
The Homeless And Me
The Impropriety Of Trees
Invasion Of The Small Muses
The Last Wallenda
Living With Max
Love's Myriad Alterations
Making Your Way: An Epithalamion
On All These Ideas In America
On Moving, On Moving On
On The Other Hand
Pandora's Gift
Photograph From The Gulf Coast
The Shape Of Sadness
A Sleep And A Forgetting
Speech For A Possible Ending
To A Friend's Wife
To The Pedestrian Crossing Elysian Fields At Humanity In New Orleans
A True Lie
Waffle Days
'what Are Chores?'
What It's Like To Travel Long Distance Alone On The Train
What We Imagine
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
American Ghost
Anti-hemingway
The Arbitrary Edge
A Bad Performance But My Own
The Barracuda
Being And Tire
Dark Horse
Death In Various Parts: 1
Death In Various Parts: 2
Death In Various Parts: 3
Deep South
A Duty To Dejection
The Enemies Of Leisure
The Fat Lady At The Liquor Store
First Music
For Sally Ann, Wherever She Is, In Alabama
For The People Of Lesbos
The Game Of The Week
A Great Woolly Mammoth
The Homeless And Me
The Impropriety Of Trees
Invasion Of The Small Muses
The Last Wallenda
Living With Max
Love's Myriad Alterations
Making Your Way: An Epithalamion
On All These Ideas In America
On Moving, On Moving On
On The Other Hand
Pandora's Gift
Photograph From The Gulf Coast
The Shape Of Sadness
A Sleep And A Forgetting
Speech For A Possible Ending
To A Friend's Wife
To The Pedestrian Crossing Elysian Fields At Humanity In New Orleans
A True Lie
Waffle Days
'what Are Chores?'
What It's Like To Travel Long Distance Alone On The Train
What We Imagine
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
