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| The 17th May Swenson Award from Utah State University Press. |
"When Luisa Igloria cites Epictetus—'as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place'—she introduces the crowded and contradictory world her poems portray: a realm of transience, yes, where the vulnerable come to harm and everything disappears, but also a scene of tremendous, unpredictable bounty, the gloriously hued density this poet loves to detail. 'I was raised / to believe not only the beautiful can live on / Parnassus,' she tells us, and she makes it true, by including in the cyclonic swirl of her poems practically everything: a gorgeous, troubling over-brimming universe." —Mark Doty, judge for the 2014 Swenson Award
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Luisa A. Igloria has two brand new books... I have one and will soon have the other. How about you?Buying a book is a vote for publisher and writer, saying that there should be a next book--that the writer's labor to pluck "the golden apples of the sun, the silver apples of the moon" is worth your reading time and your support.Why not skip the popcorn and soda at your next movie and get a book instead? Skip a lunch out and buy a book instead? Skip a couple of coffees at Starbucks and buy a book?
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| A beautifully-designed book from Elizabeth Adams's Phoenicia Publishing of Montreal |
In prismatic prose poems of daughters and fathers, of aging and longing, of loves and laments, Luisa A. Igloria fashions for us an ancient tongue for the 21st century, one that gets to the heart of why poetry is written: the pure lyric impulse of trying to live. In a time when words too often play flippant ironic games, Igloria instead takes us beneath language’s skin, to show us “how the planets align, how trees cast their shadows along the broken boundary; how the wolves howl as they press closer to their prey.” — Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of Scything Grace; Nightshift Belong to Lorca (Paterson Poetry Prize finalist); Except by Falling (2000 Pinyon Press Poetry Prize); and Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line
"prismatic prose poems" -- what a perfect phrase . . . I am tempted to steal it whenever I next talk to students about the refractive, reflective qualities of good poetry.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how that will be tucked into your freshman comp class...
DeleteHey, you might be surprised how much I tend to deviate from my course syllabi . . . the upcoming course is not literature-based, but (as I have in the past) I often ignore the department syllabus and send students into more productive and more interesting areas . . . and, of course, literature is one of those areas . . . after all, when you were a freshman in composition class, did you want to read stuffy old essays in stuffy old textbooks or something more prismatic? Break out the prisms!
DeleteAm sure you will throw lots of rainbow lights!
DeleteI was lucky RT. For lots of years I got to teach whatever I wanted in those comp classes, poetry, music, stories, plays... I developed some amazing classes.
ReplyDeleteMarly, I too have one of these books. I don't know whether I can get the other right now. Maybe later.
I have a lot of books by friends to buy! Including hers and yours.
DeleteRobbi, I cannot (dare not) complain about the limitations within the department's syllabus. It would be like biting the hand that feeds me. In other words, a formerly out of work adjunct follows rules (except when no one is watching . . . and then the students are in for some fun)!
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