Tactile Values (New Issues Poetry & Prose) [Paperback]

Mark Scott (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"He is a delicious love poet, a provocative linguistic banterer, a moving and painful elegist." -- Alicia Ostriker

"The voice is that of an original mind quite (yet quietly) unlike any other: playful, modest, profound." -- Reg Saner

"There can be heard in the poetry of Mark Scott the voice of a young poet of exceptional distinction and promise." -- Richard Poirier

"With an elusive directness making its findings highly readable, this mind/body balance of Tactile Values seems unique in American poetry." -- Reg Saner

“By turns subtly figurative then frank and physical as an open hand, Mark Scott’s poetry is true to its theme... -- Reg Saner

“Mark Scott possess perfect pitch: a conversational music, a feel for dense textures of sound and unpredictable shifts of syntax... -- Alicia Ostriker

“There can be heard in the poetry of Mark Scott the voice of a young poet of exceptional distinction... -- Richard Poirier

About the Author

Mark Scott was born in Denver, Colorado, and received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University. His work has been published in such journals as Raritan Review, Kenyon Review, Western Humanities Review, Paris Review and Poetry. He lives in Snowmass, Colorado and works at the Rocky Mountain Institute.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 86 pages
• Publisher: New Issues Pr; 1st edition (October 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932826911
• ISBN-13: 978-0932826916
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,693,552 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 A strong work throughout, February 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Tactile Values (New Issues Poetry & Prose) (Paperback)

A searing book of poems. Honest and rigorous with a sensibility serene enough to listen to the shadows hovering below the surface of words.

A stunning collection. A minor triumph of integrity and grace.

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy this book., August 19, 2002

By 

IMHO (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tactile Values (New Issues Poetry & Prose) (Paperback)

Scott's poems come at you like a great jazz line: at once controlled and extemporized; modulating, surprising, and honest --ever honest. You hear the poems at first reading and again when they repeat in your inner ear.

5.0 out of 5 stars Gentle caresses; startling blows., August 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Tactile Values (New Issues Poetry & Prose) (Paperback)

Mark Scott's words refuse to lie cold and aloof on the page. They rise and fall as inflections of voice, as pulses of action, as currents of feeling that leap across space to encircle the reader in a compelling embrace of memorable imagery, of imaginative memory. Scott takes everything personally - in the welcome sense of making even the abstract, intimate, and the intangible, concrete. These poems involve the reader not as a distanced spectator but as a confidante, a collaborator, a hands-on conspirator in wresting beauty from life's closely observed beasts.

The volume's title describes the poet's project: to touch and be touched (and sometimes to exorcise unwanted touch). Scott's ingenious command of expression relays with palpable force his uncommon perceptions of our common vocations: our journeys through the thickets of love, loss, ambition, disappointment, longing; from the limpidness of childhood to the culpabilities of adulthood. Always, an imprint is scored - and, like the touch of an absent lover, viscerally felt long afterward.