Tourist at a Miracle [Paperback]

Mark Statman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 2010

"It's very rare to watch the birth of a new style. It's like watching through a new set of Proust's kaleidoscopes. Mark Statman has been working for years on a vision of himself and parts of the city concentrated and bare as any poetry. It's hard to compare it to anything except a commentary on the real and the imagined pointillist poems almost without figures and adjectives and false decorations. But it all adds up, like a fire hydrant taken by Rudy Burkhardt, because everything is unexaggerated, convincing as a street sign. He has gotten away from any lyric leftovers, and in his anti-anti-poems he makes a lot of magic and music out of elegies of a city mouse. He has a family, a loved wife, and son, and a past he has a constant politics and is not seduced by the political. He makes us bewildered tourists at his everyday miracle." David Shapiro "TOURIST AT A MIRACLE is a big title to live up to. Mark Statman delivers the tourist's wonder and distance in spare, deliberate music American poetry's grand plain style descended from William Carlos Williams and James Schuyler. His miracles are those we all experience if we have our eyes and feelings open love, friendship, fatherhood, loss, anxieties, frustrations, fears...the everyday and always. Statman is a head-on poet willing to risk clarity in pursuit of the marvelous we might encounter anywhere." William Corbett "'The letters glow like ghosts' concludes Mark Statman's poem 'Losing Buttons' which is a memorable and a signifying cipher of how every gesture and commonplace, every person and place known has its negative, reverse, absent 'one left out,' the 'what I m not seeing' 'second question.' The poems in TOURIST AT A MIRACLE attend to the enigma of how it is 'the other half is still unknown' imply the indescribable silence and loss when the baseball game on the radio is suddenly turned off. Yet, evident, everyday things are engaged with, loved and seen. 'Yellow Jerusalem artichoke/Jesse said.' The hard, fast quick chasms of Statman's particular urban topography register in a stripped down intimacy that shares a propensity with James Schuyler for splices of weather, signals of season 'winter facts' obliquely seen. These poems compel us to notice instances of being in shorthand like (my favorite) 'syrup, algebra, love' amid the 'heights, lost, heights / resolve, view, found.'" Kimberly Lyons "The way to redeem the world, Mark Statman writes, 'is not to fall in love / but to stay in love / to use the word love / every day in your life / and mean it.' How surprising, and how wonderful, to find a poet who builds meaning this way, and insists on meaning what love means. In TOURIST AT A MIRACLE, Statman gives us language as commitment, commitment as imagination, imagination as soul-making. Statman has translated Lorca brilliantly, and here he gives us a version of New York that Lorca would recognize and welcome. This book is a delight." Joseph Lease

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

TOURIST AT A MIRACLE is Mark Statman's first full collection of poetry. His poems, translations, and criticism have appeared in many anthologies and in such publications as AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW, THE HAT, HANGING LOOSE, TIN HOUSE, and FLORIDA REVIEW. His translation of Federico García Lorca's Poet in New York (with Pablo Medina) has been widely praised; John Ashbery called it "the definitive version." He is also the author of LISTENER IN THE SNOW: THE PRACTICE AND TEACHING OF POETRY (Kenneth Koch said teaching poetry may never be the same again); THE ALPHABET OF THE TREES: A GUIDE TO NATURE WRITING (with Christian McEwen); and THE RED SKYLINE: POEMS, A CHAPBOOK. His awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Statman is an associate professor of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College of The New School and also taught for many years for Teachers & Writers Collaborative. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Katherine, and their son, Jesse.

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Hanging Loose Press (January 4, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934909165
• ISBN-13: 978-1934909164
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,556,914 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Statman's writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Tin House, Hanging Loose, Cincinnati Review, Trespass, The Hat, Bayou, conduit, subtopics, The Florida Review, Ping Pong, and American Poetry Review. His work has been featured on Poetry Daily, as well as on The Bob Edwards Show, The Leonard Lopate Show, and PBS' New York Voices. He is the author of Listener in the Snow (Teachers & Writers, 2000), and, with Christian McEwen, edited The Alphabet of the Trees: A Guide to Nature Writing (Teachers & Writers, 2000) and his essays, poetry, and translations have appeared in nine other anthologies. With Pablo Medina, he translated Federico Garcia Lorca's Poet in New York (Grove 2008). Statman's most recent collaboration is with the composer Dennis Tobenski. His book of poems, Tourist at a Miracle, is forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press (2010). He is currently at work on a translation of the selected poems of Jose Maria Hinojosa. A recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Writers Project, Statman is an associate professor of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College of The New School.