Looking for Sheena Easton (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Etter continues his experiments in language and design, moving further than ever before in the direction of concrete poetry. The influence of jazz music and of popular culture is also stronger in this collection than heretofore.

About the Author

Dave Etter is the author of twenty-eight books of poetry. He has published poems in numerous American and foreign magazines, anthologies, and textbooks, and his work has been translated into German, Polish, and Japanese. Among his awards are the Carl Sandburg, Theodore Roethke, Illinois Sesquicentennial, Society of Midland Authors, and Chicagoland magzine prizes. Etter lives in Lanark, Illinois, with his wife, Peggy, and their two cats, Freddie and Georgie.

Product Details

• Paperback: 56 pages
• Publisher: Spoon River Poetry Press (February 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0944024483
• ISBN-13: 978-0944024485
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,389,610 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Fine Book From America's Best Poet, July 21, 2004

By	Thomas P McNulty (Illinois USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

If Dave Etter were a boxer he would be the kind of fighter that makes the other guy say to himself: This guy has great skill and I'm about to get my butt kicked! If Dave Etter were a boxer then getting into the ring with him would mean getting a boxing lesson. He would teach you a few things, first with his left jab, followed by a quick two-step shuffle, and then he would dance away from you smiling. You'd know he was going to knock you out later, and he wants you to think about it for awhile.

Dave Etter is that kind of poet where every stanza is a surprise and he makes it look oh so easy. LOOKING FOR SHEENA EASTON continues the journey that began with GO READ THE RIVER which many place side by side with Etter's ALLIANCE, ILLINOIS as a masterpiece of modern poetry. I would be in agreement on that point. Dave Etter has been described as a Midwestern Poet but he speaks a universal language. His voice is the voice of midland peoples; the small town farmers, the lonely housewives, the frustrated teenager, the blue collar laborers, and the white collar entrepreneurs. And the land that often characterizes their lives - the endless fields of tall prairie corn, the rivers and valleys. And always there are the small towns, some no more than flyspecks on the map, but all vital and alive with the characters that inhabit these poems.

The title poem establishes the theme that runs through the book. Etter uses the once highly visible Sheena Easton to represent loss: Something I had wanted to hang on to/was lost and gone forever./The people I loved who lived and died/in the Twentieth Century/are now farther away than ever/and I can't tell them goodbye again.

Etter uses the title of Easton's famous James Bond song, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, as a rhapsodic refrain. The forty four poems that follow vary in tone and length, although most fill the space of a single page. Etter is justifiably lauded for the brevity of poems that are startling in their complexity and depth. Here is a writer of genius who can transform a solitary blank page into an insightful exposition on life. What creative depth Dave Etter can do with one page puts the rest of us to shame. Rather than describe the remaining poems, I leave it to interested readers to discover the magical work of Dave Etter. He is perhaps America's best living poet, and while he has experienced extraordinary critical acclaim during his career, let us all make certain that his present work receives the attention that it deserves. LOOKING FOR SHEENA EASTON is a knockout punch.