The Plum-Stone Game (New Series) [Paperback]

Kathleen Jesme (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2009 | Series: New Series (Book 26)

Kathleen Jesme asks what happens if the ordinary ways of knowing are taken away--if one is suddenly unable to see or hear, or has been stripped of the familiar past. What shows through when darkness creates a different inner landscape? Jesme excavates these inner landscapes and discovers artifacts to reveal new directions to dig, always bringing the reader somewhere unexpected.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Jesme's third collection is a sweeping book made up of serial poems—long sequences of short, tonally related lyrics—that meditate on pastoral, aesthetic and domestic themes. The two longest series, The Little Hour, and I will not let thee go except thou bless me, delve deep into the sensuality of brief, everyday occurrences with a radiant clarity. The speaker of In June or July (part of The Little Hour) could be talking about the poem's author: She uses the smallest sensual experience— / her fingers pulling apart the tiny rootlets of peat moss / and then separating the plants. Jesme focuses on and illuminates small experiences. Many of the poems are thick with aesthetic revelry, and while taken singly they can underwhelm, their cumulative effect can be mesmerizing. There's attention to the power of lyrical lacunae, as in the poems of Cole Swenson and Mei-mei Bersenbrugge, but there are also traces of narrative woven throughout, most notably in the opening prose poem series Lives of the Saints: I was a boy like other boys, except that I had murdered my sister. There was a lot of atonement required. It's tantalizing, and shows Jesme's gift for creating atmosphere, something she demonstrates throughout these luminous glimpses of various lives. (Jan.)
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Review

The Plum-Stone Game is a delicate reconstruction of sense-memory and its eros: with archeological precision Kathleen Jesme revitalizes the broken vessel of the world, giving us one beautiful version of its amphora after another. The poems hold; they retain light and joy and the fierce electric charges of the body. Here is a poet who has wearied of the ways in which language has been used to show us the impossibility of meaning. She is refreshingly unafraid of the sensual power of poetry, its difficulties, and its ability to comprehend the larger sphere of being. --D.A. Powell

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Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Ahsahta Press (January 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934103039
• ISBN-13: 978-1934103036
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,487,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kathleen Jesme is a poet and novelist who lives in Minnesota. She grew up on the Canadian border, amid lakes and pine forests and Scandinavians. She currently lives in a suburb of St. Paul, on a small tree farm. She has noticed that the more trees you plant, the more leaves you need to rake in fall.