Spencer Short's Tremolo is a winner of the 2000 National Poetry Series Open Competition, selected by US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. For nearly twenty years, the National Poetry Series has discovered many new and emerging voices and has been instrumental in launching the careers of poets and writers such as Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Denis Johnson, Thylias Moss, Mark Levine, and Dionisio Martinez.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
“[Tremolo] brings to mind both T.S. Eliot and McSweeney’s....” (Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker )
“What a treat to listen to this new voice with its nutty intelligence and its strange authority.” (Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States, 2001 )
“These are buoyant, agile, and often frightened poems -- poems that would like to outsmart themselves but -- poignantly, thankfully -- cannot.” (Mark Levine, author of Enola Gay and Debt )
“Flipping through Tremolo, you immediately confront a prickly stir of humor, philosophy and romantic giddiness; reading this book is something like walking into a kitchen at a party and coming upon a wild charmer you’d never met, mid-gesticulation -- a terrific storyteller, but also one eager to switch gears mid-sentence, mid-phrase, mid-thought...the perfect panacea: a source of wisdom disguised as a thrill ride.” (Emily Nussbaum, The New York Times Book Review )
“What a treat to listen to this new voice with its nutty intelligence and its strange authority.” (Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States, 2001 )
“These are buoyant, agile, and often frightened poems -- poems that would like to outsmart themselves but -- poignantly, thankfully -- cannot.” (Mark Levine, author of Enola Gay and Debt )
“Flipping through Tremolo, you immediately confront a prickly stir of humor, philosophy and romantic giddiness; reading this book is something like walking into a kitchen at a party and coming upon a wild charmer you’d never met, mid-gesticulation -- a terrific storyteller, but also one eager to switch gears mid-sentence, mid-phrase, mid-thought...the perfect panacea: a source of wisdom disguised as a thrill ride.” (Emily Nussbaum, The New York Times Book Review )
About the Author
Spencer Short, a graduate of James Madison University, received his M.F.A. at the University of Michigan, where he was awarded both the Hopwood Award and the Cowden Fellowship. A Maytag Fellow and a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has also won an Academy of American Poets Award. Spencer Short has worked as a lecturer, a wine steward, a bouncer, a bartender, a copy editor, on a keg truck, and at London's Globe Theatre project. He lives in Iowa City.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
like a vintage guitar effect!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Tremolo: Poems (National Poetry Series) (Paperback)
Achieves a true tremolo effect/affect in his poems with the rapid alternation between tones -at first wry then immediately sensitive, open and then oblique, lyric as much as strategic. Out there in front of irony is something else entirely -- and its deeply suspicious -- to get there requires experimental navigations and a caffienated confidence. Spencer's poems trust no one and keep on moving -- and with all their contortions, you'd think the poet would be exhausted, but he's just getting started, he's heading out for new frontiers, he's sneaking up behind you.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
more than deserving,
By mister "misterperson" (america) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tremolo: Poems (National Poetry Series) (Paperback)
This book jangles and pops, spins yarn and b.s. at an almost equal ratio, and is possessed of one of the purest, most complex, and thoroughly analyzed hearts (a word that is used in nearly every poem)I have encountered in a first book. It manages, through its mastery of a number of formal and situational techniques, to read variously and never seem fomulaic, yet stays in a remarkably close orbit around its core: the desire to communicate in the face of loss (of love; of the loss of true knowledge the accumulation and overflow of trivial knowledge accompanies). And yes, it approaches sentimentality, but it is this freedom to feel that seems somehow so new in these poems. I'm starting to sound like a jackass though. This is an exceedingly human book in a time when most poems seem to be written w/ calculators or by multiple choice. It is also smart as my new sailor suit with its brass buttons and serious collar. I'll be looking forward to more work by Short, but am happy to have his book now.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A TOUR DE FORCE!,
By Bradley Washington (Nokatomi Tower) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tremolo: Poems (National Poetry Series) (Paperback)
Swift, sweet, irreverent, rangy and as spirited in the writing and voice work as it is splendid in design. Laced with a surprising amount of dramatic moments, little laughs and a sweet side. It's less about the dangers and pleasures of the unchained id than the giddy anarchy of the unbound imagination. Compared to most of what else is out there, though, it's so good-natured and tame that you can't help but let it win you over.
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