The Name Encanyoned River: Selected Poems 1960-1985 - Softcover

Eshleman, Clayton

4.37

19 ratings by Goodreads

9780876856529: The Name Encanyoned River: Selected Poems 1960-1985

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0876856520 ISBN 13: 9780876856529

Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, 2005

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Poems explore the author's experiences and a variety of themes including birth, death, and jazz

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Review:

Clayton Eshleman, author of more than fifty books, writes in the "raw" tradition of poets like Walt Whitman, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Jerome Rothenberg. Heavily influenced by the writings of Cesar Vallejo (whom he translated Into English), Wilhelm Reich (to whom he devotes an entire poem), and Cadjung (whose terminology occurs throughout the book), Eshleman's The Name Encanyoned River might well be described as a poetical autobiography couched in the language of Jungian archetypes, Reichean sexual liberation, and Blakean divinities. Thus the book is a rich and at times perplexing hybrid. Eshleman typically composes his poetry as a sort of free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness diary. Words spill over the pages in upper and lower case, and there are occasional concrete poems and outright drawings. Although this format is often challenging, it allows Eshleman considerable stylistic range, including his penchant for surrealistic strings of imagery like "Hershey bar napalm license plates." Most disturbing, however is Eshleman's nostalgie de la boue, his love of the scatological and his all-too-frequent recourse to images like menstrual blood, semen, and maggots -amounting to a kind of emotional over-kill. The Name EncanyonedRiver draws from almost all of Eshleman's previous work, including generous selections from Fracture (1983), which form the third and most successful part of the book. In this part ("The Separation Continuum") Eshleman presents an interlocking sequence of poems on Cro-Magnon man and the cave paintings at Lascaux and Les Trois Freres. The caves become a vivid and concrete symbol for the mysterious origins of art and dialectical thought, a time when "the first words were mixed with animal fat." The Name Encanyoned River is an important book, recommended for all larger poetry collections. -- From Independent Publisher

The 1802 Blake Butts Letter Variation
Adhesive Love, Sels.
The American Sublime
Ariadne's Reunion
The Aurignacians Have The Floor
Auto
The Baptism Of Desire
The Book Of Yorunomado
The Bridge At The Mayan Pass
The Cogollo
The Color Rake Of Time
Coproatavism
Creation
The Crocus Bud
The Crone
The Death Of Bill Evans
Deeds Done And Suffered By Light
Diagonal
The Dragon Rat Tail
An Emergence
Equal Time
Evocation I
The Excavation Of Artaud
Fracture
Hades In Manganese
I Blended Rose
Ira
Junk Mail
A Kind Of Moisture On The Wall
The Language Orphan
Lemons
The Lich Gate
The Loaded Sleeve Of Hades
Magdalenian
Maithuna
Man And Bottle
The Man With A Beard Of Roses
Master Hanus To His Blindness
Matthew's Birth
The Name Encanyoned River
Natal Daemon
Niemonjima Ii
Nora Jaffe
Notes On A Visit To Le Tue D'audoubert
Ode To Reich
Our Lady Of The Three-pronged Devil
The Overcoats Of Eden
Permanent Shadow
The Physical Traveler
Placements I
Placements Ii
The Sandstone Gate
Scarlet Experiment
Scorpion Hopscotch
Silence Raving
Soutine
Still-life, With American Violets
Still-life, With Fraternity
Study For A Self-portrait At 12 Years Old
Sugar
Tiresias Drinking
Tomb Of Donald Duck
Triptych
Tuxedoed Groom On Canvas Bride
Un Poco Loco
Visions Of The Fathers Of Lascaux
A Visit From Paul Blackburn
Walk Vi
The Yellow Garment
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder�

From Library Journal:

Eshleman is a prolific poet and, although each book has its own thematic integrity, it is easy to lose track of the larger vision. This selected poems restores that unity. It traces the evolution of Eshleman's poetry, from the early poems exploring personality, through the Reichean depths of the darkest self, outward through the paleolithic caves of southern France, and full circle back to the reborn creative self reaching out to others. "Suffering/ is truer to man than joy," Eshleman writes in a relatively early poem; variations on this theme have remained central to his work. With a generous selection from the most important collections, plus 16 new poems, this book will be an asset to any modern poetry collection. Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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