Ark (Kuhl House Poets) - Softcover

Isles, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087745860X ISBN 13: 9780877458609

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 2003

Synopsis

This poetry is about the people and events that pass through a life, leaving a void; about finding a presence in that absence, and waking up to the realities of the moment. It is concerned with discovery and confrontation, and uncovering and witnessing.

About this title

About the Author:

John Isles grew up in Setauket, New York, and now lives in Oakland, California. After graduating from SUNY Stony Brook, he joined the Peace Corps and taught English in Estonia. He attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has published poems in such magazines as Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, and ZYZZYVA.

Review:

"Ark sails over the kingdom of water, negotiating the sirens and the jaded sea, the erased footprints and the burials, the dark 'unlit rooms of waves....' A stranded man, mutineer, explorer. A Noah of the covenant, an Odysseus, an evangelist of fish, a lover of the new world. John Isles gives us, through these various captains, the log of a brilliant voyage: as the delicate relationship between the human and the natural world tips and dives and threatens to capsize. With all the doubt and uncertainty of Keats, he has made a stunningly beautiful new poetry out of 'mostly water, ' tacking in and sailing away."

"Beneath their meticulous, smart, aphoristic surfaces, John Isles's poems investigate the collisions between mystery and meaning without allowing either to be absorbed by the other. He's also a marvelous linguistic flirt."

About this edition

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 087745860X
• ISBN 13: 9780877458609
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 68