Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Smoke
    Smoke
    Smoke
    Ebook81 pages36 minutes

    Smoke

    By Dorianne Laux

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Dorianne Laux’s long-awaited third book of poetry follows her collection, What We Carry, a finalist for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. In Smoke, Laux revisits familiar themes of family, working class lives and the pleasures of the body in poetry that is vital and artfully craftedpoetry that "gets hard in the face of aloofness," in the words of one reviewer. In Smoke, as in her previous work, Laux weaves the warp and woof of ordinary lives into extraordinary and complex tapestries. In "The Shipfitter’s Wife," a woman recalls her husband’s homecoming at the end of his work day:

    Then I’d open his clothes and take
    the whole day inside methe ship’s
    gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
    the voice of the foreman clanging
    off the hull’s silver ribs. Spark of lead
    kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
    the white fire of the torch, the whistle,
    and the long drive home.
    And in the title poem, Laux muses on her own guilty pleasures:
    Who would want to give it up, the coal
    a cat’s eye in the dark room, no one there
    but you and your smoke, the window
    cracked to street sounds, the distant cries
    of living things. Alone, you are almost
    safe . . .

    With her keen ear and attentive eye, Dorianne Laux offers us a universe with which we are familiar, but gives it to us fresh.

    Dorianne Laux is the author of two previous collections of poetry from BOA Editions, Ltd., and is co-author, with Kim Addonizio, of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Joys of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton, 1997), chosen as an alternate selection by several bookclubs. Laux was the judge for the 2012 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Contest, and is a tenured professor in the creative writing program at the University of Oregon. Laux lives in Eugene, Oregon.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBOA Editions Ltd.
    Release dateDec 20, 2013
    ISBN9781938160387
    Smoke

    Read more from Dorianne Laux

    Related to Smoke

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related categories

    Reviews for Smoke

    4/5

    13 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Smoke - Dorianne Laux

      Smoke

      Smoke

      poems by

      Dorianne Laux

      BOA Editions, Ltd.        Rochester, NY         2000

      Copyright © 2000 Dorianne Laux

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      10 11 12    9 8 7

      For information about permission to reuse any material from this book please contact

      The Permissions Company at www.permissionscompany.com or e mail permdude@eclipse.net

      Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with the assistance of grants from the Literature Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sonia Raiziss Giop Charitable Foundation, the Eric Mathieu King Fund of The Academy of American Poets, The Halcyon Hill Foundation, as well as from the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust, the County of Monroe, NY, and from many individual supporters, and the Estate of E. M. K.

      See Colophon on page 72 for acknowledgement of special individual supporters.

      Cover Design: Daphne Poulin-Stofer

      Typesetting: Richard Foerster

      Manufacturing: McNaughton & Gunn, Lithographers

      BOA Logo: Mirko

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Laux, Dorianne.

        Smoke : poems / by Dorianne Laux.– 1st ed.

            p. cm. – (American poets continuum series; vol. 62)

        ISBN 1–880238–85–3 – ISBN 1–880238–86–1 (pbk.) – ISBN 978–1–938160–38–7 (ebook)

          1. Women–Poetry I. Title. II. Series.

        PS3562.A8455 S66 2000

        895.1′–dc21

      00-057945

      There is no smoke without a fire.

      —Plautus, Curculio 1.53

      Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

      —popular saying

      To want the world is fire; to obtain it, smoke.

      —Tzigane saying

      She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.

      —Janis Joplin, of Bessie Smith

      CONTENTS

      SMOKE  

      Smoke

      Last Words

      Books

      Death Comes to Me Again, a Girl

      Ray at 14

      Abschied Symphony

      Stairway to Heaven

      Even Music

      Trying to Raise the Dead

      The Word

      How It Will Happen, When

      The Line

      Window

      Wing

      Prayer

      FIRE  

      Heart

      Olympia

      The Shipfitter’s Wife

      Firestarter

      The Student

      Pearl

      Figures

      Fear

      Family Stories

      Twilight

      Iceland

      Reetika Arranges My Closet

      Oh, the Water

      The Gardener

      Neon Horses

      The Orgasms of Organisms

      Life Is Beautiful

      Notes

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Colophon

      for my daughter, Tristem,

      Queen of Everything

        SMOKE

      SMOKE

      Who would want to give it up, the coal

      a cat’s eye in the dark room, no one there

      but you and your smoke, the window

      cracked to street sounds, the distant cries

      of living things. Alone, you are almost

      safe, smoke slipping out between the sill

      and the glass, sucked into the night

      you don’t dare enter, its eyes drunk

      and swimming with stars. Somewhere

      a Dumpster is ratcheted open by the claws

      of a black machine. All down the block

      something inside you opens and shuts.

      Sinister screech, pneumatic wheeze,

      trash slams into the chute: leftovers, empties.

      You

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1