The Auroras: New Poems [Hardcover]

David St. John (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 20, 2012

“David St. John's work has been distinguished from the start by its intimacy and subtlety, and by a disturbing force, the work of an urgent sensibility and a true ear.” —W. S. Merwin

This long-awaited collection from David St. John is the most provocative, adventurous, and stylistically eclectic work of his career. The beauty, music, and artistry of David St. John’s poetry have been long admired; now The Auroras reveals the extent and breadth of this masterful poetic achievement. Readers of Larry Levis, Dana Gioia, and Phillip Levine will be captivated by this searing, surprising, and sensual collection from one of the world’s greatest poets writing at the height of his talent and insight.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Poems…full of magic and light…Essential for readers of contemporary poetry.” (Library Journal (starred review))

“Read these poems slowly because this kind of writing does not happen overnight… THE AURORAS is luxurious whether dealing with the ordinary or the magnificent.” (Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books)

From the Back Cover

An exciting, long-awaited collection from the National Book Award finalist, a poet of wild imagination and formidable accomplishment

David St. John's new collection of poetry, The Auroras, is the most provocative, adventurous, and stylistically eclectic work of his career. Composed as a triptych of three distinct movements, it opens with a sequence of urgent, subversive, sensually charged poems, crackling with desire.

In the center section, St. John returns to the California landscapes of his youth, in both the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These poems are quiet and measured, yet often psychologically troubling.

The final section of The Auroras is constructed as an album of philosophical and aesthetic meditations, all haunted by the force of an emerging sense of mortality. In this collection, even the most compelling emanations of light—artistic, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual—are inevitably framed by impending darkness.

The beauty, music, and artistry of David St. John's poetry have been long admired; now The Auroras reveals the extent and breadth of his masterful poetic achievement.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1ST edition (March 20, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062088483
• ISBN-13: 978-0062088482
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #976,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Milestone April 22, 2012

By M. Fitzpatrick

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a breakthrough book for a very accomplished poet with a long career of accolades. He inhabits his familiar voice, but on a different level entirely. Lyrical, mystical, surprising, and full of beauty.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Pleased with product and delivery March 27, 2012

By Siwsan G.

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

He's done it again! Nothing I can say is as eloquent as the book itself! Can't recommend it highly enough.

3.0 out of 5 stars Some attractions beneath surface irritants November 25, 2012

By Jon Corelis

Format:Hardcover

I found this a mixed bag. The poet seems to have developed an off-putting (to me at least) verse formatting style which I found continually and irritatingly distracted from what the poems were really doing. This style consists of (with rare exceptions) omitting all punctuation but capitalizing the beginning of each line, using extra blank spaces within lines, and writing "&" instead of "and".

[Digression: I'm aware that this latter feature is ubiquitous in contemporary verse, and where the heck did it come from? And what the heck is it supposed to accomplish? Convey that the the poet is speaking so urgently that he doesn't have time to write three characters instead of one? Or rather, type three characters instead of one, since one effect of the practice is to fix the reader's attention firmly on the fact that the poet is writing the poem on a machine rather than composing by handwriting or orally. Maybe this is some misguided attempt to give an atmosphere of "spontaneity" in a machine age, but what in turn is the point of that? Isn't "and" just as spontaneous as "&"? And what's the value of spontaneity in poetry anyway? If spontaneity were valuable in itself, farts would smell sweet. End of digression.]

Anyway, I find all this diminishes what could be some interesting poems. The cummings-like use of internal spaces as quasi-musical rests is now old hat and always has seemed to me a technique of dubious value: its effect here reminds me of how the boss making his annual speech at the company Christmas party will punctuate it with long pauses to emphasize that what he has just said is Sincere and Important.... I found the combination of the modernistic lack of punctuation with the old fashioned typography of beginning each line with a capital letter just confusing: I kept wondering whether or not a new sentence was supposed to be starting, and the reminder via the capital letter that a new line was beginning had the effect of emphasizing the Clever Line Break Syndrome with which contemporary academic poets seem afflicted.

All of which is too bad, since I thought that beneath these irritating mechanics the poems themselves were generally better than most mainstream current American poetry: I noticed that as the book went on, the poems got better, and as they got better they dropped many of these mannerisms, though those pesky ampersands were still around. Several of the poems give intriguing contemporary slice-of-life short stories which are clearer, better written, and more vivid than most examples of this popular form, and in patches the language really seems to take off, achieving an utterance both unaffectedly poetic and convincingly contemporary. I would have been tempted to give this four stars, for me a high rating for a poetry book, if it hadn't been marred by this superfluous surface gadgetry. Read more ›