Tulips, Water, Ash (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize) [Paperback]

Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet (Author)

Book Description

Series: Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize | Publication Date: October 30, 2009

Tulips, Water, Ash begins with a kind of invocation--a calling-out from the domestic world, "the soft / chewy center of here: the mailbox, / the toaster, the dentist office . . . Whiteboard,whiteout. Little yellow / notes everywhere like moths." So many of these poems--their bus stops and taquerias, sidewalks and bathroom mirrors--give us the ordinary, the daily, but with all the lights turned on: surfaces made near-transparent by a consciousness whose shifts and asides are a pleasure to inhabit. Others dive into the mystery just underneath, colliding junior high school with theoretical cosmology, suburbia with multiple universes. There is a fascination, too, with the life of language, the names of things in these poems often as much a mystery as their simple presence. This is daily life with its underlying passions and strangeness exposed--the point at which each of us, like the speaker, "slip[s] back down / through a hole in the net."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet's poems move with a wonderfully alive, actively thinking attentiveness. Her language is eager and inquisitive, darting this way and that toward meaning, opening our eyes and ears, our minds, to continual change--personal, communal and cosmic. Keenly aware of the potential "heat in the flint, light in the twig," she shows us how to see the very flux of life." (Reginald Gibbons, author of Creatures of a Day )

About the Author

LISA GLUSKIN STONESTREET has been awarded a Javits fellowship and a Phelan Award, and her poems have appeared in journals such as Blackbird, The Iowa Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and son. JEAN VALENTINE is the author of ten books of poetry, including Door in the Mountain, winner of the 2004 National Book Award.

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Northeastern (October 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555537081
• ISBN-13: 978-1555537081
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,109,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rewards perceptive readers and re-readers, November 19, 2009

By 

D. Gray - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tulips, Water, Ash (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize) (Paperback)

In a high-concept world where so many things are made to be instantly digestible, this book demands--and rewards--repeated reading. You'll discover something wonderful each time, perhaps a new perception--the poet's, or your own.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Imaginative, Witty, October 1, 2009

By 

LadyMurasaki "oldsoul" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tulips, Water, Ash (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize) (Paperback)

In this, her debut collection of poems, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet introduces readers to her singular mind. Each poem is intricately crafted, and yet each also manages to soar with wonder and with imagination, so the reader feels transported by a thought, an emotion, an inquiry and never weighted down. Too much poetry sacrifices artifice for anything that remotely relates to the daily lives of people; Stonestreet's poems are all musical, and yet all are a reflection of the world in which we live, making her poetry at once accessible and profound. In one poem, Stonestreet muses on post-it-notes while crying out to God; in another, she examines the overly-contoured shape of modern design and wonders what impact this environment has on the mind. These are poems to be savored, shared, read and re-read.