Amesbury Public Library

Paper banners, Jane Miller

eng

no index present

poetry

Paper banners

1376496837

Jane Miller

"A herald of desire, suffering, mortality, and the mission of poetry itself, Jane Miller's Paper Banners 'say[s] the cosmos / isn't hostile. / Yet strangles a dove / with one hand.' Against this angst, Miller steps outside of history to contemplate voices of love, aging, and artmaking. Many poems are addressed to family members, friends, and young poets, or pay homage to familiar figures taken by time or tragedy, including Virginia Woolf, Osip Mandelstam, and the Song Dynasty poet Li Qingzhao. In clear, short lines, these poems harken to ancient banderoles, or pennants, which announced rallying cries on the lances of knights and mottoes on the flags of ships. Here, Miller's Paper Banners is made of images of the American Southwest and scrutinizes its political and physical landscape. Like skywriting streamed in white smoke, this collection bears its message on the wind, its words addressed to anyone. As Miller catalogues the intimate experiences that make up a life--friendships, loves, dreams, our human connection to the environment--Paper Banners becomes a hope that 'what will survive of us is love.'" --, description from publisher's website., https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/paper-banners/

I. The grand piano -- The lovers -- Harmless ode with Osip Mandelstam -- Jade River -- Idyll -- Aesthetic argument -- The thatched cottage -- The missing apricot tree -- Enflamed ode -- II. Paper banners -- Augury -- At the magistrate -- Homage to order with disorder in last stanza -- Chekhov parks his Corvette -- Bird with one leg -- Pompeii -- Have courage and be kind -- Meadow with standing crows -- Jasmine in a foreign country -- Fundamentals -- Sunshower -- Children versus generals -- III. Elegy with last lines in the form of haiku -- The plot of Hamlet -- The call to mindfulness -- Roadhouse -- Lament with a few lines in New York -- The queen loves roses, the peasant loves roses and shade -- Stand in the rain or not. Never to splash in a fountain or swim in a sea -- Poetry opposed to religion -- What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, has a bed but never sleeps? A river. A sonnet -- Consolation and misery -- Oysters in West Marin -- Dinner party -- Pablo Casals, sand dollar with embossed drawing -- Pilgrims versus emperors -- Forager -- The bell slurs in the blowing spray -- Heaven rushing out