Flying Over Sonny Liston: Poems (Western Literature Series) [Paperback]

Gary Short (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The title of one of the little gems included in this book, "In the Gradual," adequately describes its mode. Speaking often of the passage of time, the poems, with time, accrue local, arrested images: "The gold of leaves/ becomes too pure, too heavy,/ falls in drifts./ On the long horizon the moon appears/ a carpenter's blue thumbnail" ("Given Back"). Nothing is left unmarked. The sheer delight as each accumulates recollections of people and places comes through when the moment occasionally breaks open to reveal a startling inside: "the hour's unlit mouth" ("Out of Night"), or "the scurry of wings/ like a preface to arrows" ("Outside"). It is a manner that surely shows a debt to Norman Dubie, and likewise one that is impossible to imagine without the vividly evoked bombed and poisoned landscape of the American Southwest. Short's genius is to show us that this landscape is not lost through its people, so long as there is compassion, and witnesses like him.?Steven R. Ellis, Pennsylvania State Univ. Libs., Univ. Park
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

American Light
Birds
Church
Driving Nevada/reprise
Dust
Elegy For My Mother
Erotica
Flying Over Sonny Liston
Found In Any Gray
Gathering
Gentle
The Giant Ants Of Texas
Given Back
Hard Winter
In The Gradual
Little Makeweights Of Guilt
Naming
Near The Bravo 20 Bombing Range
A New Kind Of Delicate
One Summer
Out Of Night
Outside
Psalm
Rain
Shoshonean
The Stars That Fell
Tidings
Vespers
Watching The Ax Fall
White
Wovoka
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: University of Nevada Press (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874172853
• ISBN-13: 978-0874172850
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,357,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Astounding View of the Human Condition, July 27, 1998

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[e-mail] (Nevada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flying Over Sonny Liston: Poems (Western Literature Series) (Paperback)

Gary Short covers a lot of ground in each line, carefully choosing the perfect words. This book is the first I have ever marked with exclamation points, emphasizing lines I want to return to again and again, lines that haunt. His descriptions of nature go beyond mere settings, and delicately tie in with the mood or message behind the poems. Some verbs shock you with their originality and clarity. From a flame that is a "fluttering goldfish tail" to aspen leaves "spinning to coin in the wind's hand", readers are guaranteed to have their perceptions twisted into something astounding.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book to learn by, August 1, 2000

By 

Justin Evans (West Wendover, Nevada United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Flying Over Sonny Liston: Poems (Western Literature Series) (Paperback)

Having Gary Short's previous book, Theory of Twilight, I would have bought this book anyway, but I had no idea how much it would teach me about writing. This book is astounding. I love the open style of this book. While you can immediately tell that the subject matter is highly personal, each poem is accessable and seems to invite the reader to see Mr. Short's point of view. It is also important to note that this book is not just good poetry, it is well crafted poetry. Anyone wanting a truly marvelous experience with a book of poems should get this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When Only a Poet Can Explain, April 2, 2005

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Flying Over Sonny Liston: Poems (Western Literature Series) (Paperback)

Gary Short is a fine poet who manages to visit places warily avoided by most. His poems vary in subject matter, but his best poems find expression of loss, of grief, of finding solace in the vast prairie that is his living space.

At his brother's funeral Short reflects on his brother's dying: 'It is his last day./ I watch him sleep. A death-drowse./ His thin fingers touch/ his penis, belly, chest,/ & his face, as if/ he is trying to memorize/ himself.'

In an Elegy For My Mother: 'The sunflower/ all day long follows/ the light/ (heaven's eye)/ & even after its star has set,/ continues to look out/ until loss/ is realized. Then/ it can only stare into the ground.'

Words such as these fine poetry make and Gary Short has found a direct line to our moments of vulnerability for which we can only be grateful. This is fine poet. Grady Harp, April 05