How to Live on Bread and Music - Softcover

Sweeney, Jennifer K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0979458226 ISBN 13: 9780979458224

Publisher: Perugia Press, 2009

Synopsis

Winner of the prestigious James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets and the 2009 Perugia Press Prize, this collection is life-affirming but without illusions. How to Live on Bread and Music, showcases poet Jennifer K. Sweeney's mature consciousness and circumspect intelligence. The book takes us on a physical and spiritual trip, symbolized in recurring images of the train. Exploring broad themes such as identity formation, nostalgia, and impermanence, the poet passes through risk to find refuge in the sensory world. Afaa M. Weaver says, These are poems that tell us we move forward in moments when motion seems all too risky and stillness all too intolerable.

About this title

About the Author:

Jennifer K. Sweeney's first book of poems, Salt Memory, won the 2006 Main Street Rag Poetry Award. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Southern Review, Hunger Mountain, Crab Orchard, Spoon River, and Passages North. After living in San Francisco for twelve years, she currently lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Review:

Jennifer K. Sweeney's How to Live on Bread and Music is a remarkable achievement from the hand of a poet with a subtle and compassionate mindfulness. These are poems that tell us we move forward in moments when motion seems all too risky and stillness all too intolerable. Adept at the delicate project of inventiveness in the line, she shows us time and again that language is the matter of the poet and that there is surprise in the gift, as this book is sure evidence of the gift. --Afaa Michael Weaver, James Laughlin Award judge

Jennifer Sweeney's second collection of poems is generous and sympathetic, melodic and transforming. Her playful yet incisive language, rich in imagery and metaphor, serves the larger purpose of helping us see our relationship to each other and the natural world with fresh eyes. --Apalachee Review

Jennifer Sweeney is one of the best young poets writing today, one other young poets should study as an example of the heights to which well-crafted image and form can take their own writing. --The Pedestal Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Perugia Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0979458226
• ISBN 13: 9780979458224
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104