What The Darkness Proposes: Poems (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction) - Hardcover

Martin, Professor Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801854873 ISBN 13: 9780801854873

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996

Synopsis

"Martin is a moralist in the best sense of the word, a poet concerned with defining human values in a changing society, making his points with wit as well as compassion. He is not afraid of using ideas in verse and brings his intelligence as well as imagination to bear on each poem."--Dana Gioia

In this new collection by poet and translator Charles Martin, a darkly comic vision engages an unpredictable variety of subjects in poems of astute technical assurance. In this book, the reader will find a displaced snapping turtle, advertisements that look back at us, the link between classical Athens and a television quiz show, and many other wonders, including the unsettling possibility of a poetry reading

"Whose audience consists of... you. There's only one of you, I see. One would have hoped there might be two. One ought to be outnumbered by One's audience, don't you agree? The two of us, then? You and I? Will no one else be dropping in? I thought as much. Then let's begin... "

Praise for Passages from Friday: "Martin's Friday... is a wholly successful characterization. His plain speech and plebeian misspellings, his notional capitals and italics compromise... a style that realizes and projects the speaker's character, a tour de force in which style embodies vision."--Daniel Hoffman, in Words to Create a World

Praise forThe Poems of Catullus: "[A] translation that successfully recreates in English the wit, the lyric exaltation, the playful banter, the despair, the scurrilous invective, and the dramatic flair of the original, all of it moving easily in artfully contrived and skillfully controlled English equivalents of Catullus' many and varied meters."--Bernard Knox, New York Review of Books

"Martin is an American poet; he puts the poetry, the immediacy of the street, back into English Catullus. The effect is electric."--Newsweek

About this title

Review:

Like some kid who listens to Depeche Mode while practicing the ancient art of divining water, Charles Martin spins out beautifully constructed formal poems with a decidedly contemporary spin. "At Home With Psyche and Eros," for instance, depicts Eros bringing home the tabloids so that Psyche can read about Bigfoot's pregnant daughter. "Victoria's Secret" similarly juxtaposes the contemporary lingerie catalogue with current perceptions of Victorian sensuality. I'll leave you with this sample, from "Stanzas After Endgame": "Meaning emerges out of random act / And lasts as long as there are those intent / On finding it and keeping it intact / In fables of impermanence."

Book Description:

New poems from the author of Steal the Bacon.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0801854873
• ISBN 13: 9780801854873
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 80