Inspired and informed by the music and urban landscape of New York City, Tongue & Groove employs jazzy and descriptive language in a sweep of city-life experiences and memories. A passionate rendering of incidents in spaces that include the subway, a school for the handicapped, and The Museum of Modern Art, Stephen Cramer employs richly sensual language and a wide range of imagery. Alluring portrayals of butterfly migrations, graffiti, and city buses complement this collection’s connection to the everyday hoots, shouts, and yammer of the streets.
--or you can open
your mouth & stick out
your tongue,
take that fugitive impulse
from the artist’s hand
straight into your very gut
& maybe find out along the way
if the lime-green
of that inverted roof
& the burnt almond
of the filling station’s
roadside grasses
live up to their names.
--from “Taste”
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Stephen Cramer is the author of Shiva’s Drum and a National Poetry Series winner.
"I can think of almost no other young poet who can claim Stephen Cramer's lyric authority and self-possession. His odes and elegies capture the grit and delights of New York City in a manner that manages to capture something of Crane's sense of the marvelous with Oppen's descriptive acuity. This is to say he follows in the footsteps of the giants--and he shows himself abundantly capable of filling their shoes. Tongue & Groove is a ravishing book."--David Wojahn
"Cramer's Tongue and Groove celebrates Manhattan's vibrancy and the passionate self-expression of its denizens. . . . Tongue and Groove is a book of linguistic and formal performance. . . . This performance is fluent and exuberant."--Antioch Review
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Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 5171729-n
Book Description Condition: New. Brand New. Seller Inventory # 9780252074738
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 5171729-n