Gloss - Softcover

Stewart, Ida

4.54

28 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0979458242 ISBN 13: 9780979458248

Publisher: Perugia Press, 2011

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GLOSS won the 2011 Perugia Press Prize. Like the Appalachian mountain setting from which GLOSS arises, the language in this collection is in flux, full of paradox and thresholds, each word and line a peak or a range. The poems are mined from the ruptured and fragmented rock and dirt of the colloquial, creating a kind of landguage or langscape. Indeed, the poems (mis)behave like little ecosystems, in which word-play, rhyme, and enjambment simultaneously make and break sense, join and repel evoking the tensions between progress and resistance. Embedded among the strata of GLOSS is loss: many poems respond to mountaintop removal coal mining, which is literally flattening the rich complexity of the Appalachian landscape and culture. As the poems give voice to the mountain-top, they consider the delicate relationship between humans and nature, lover and beloved, as well as the natural complexity of communication and utterance, the struggle to say the unsayable.

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About the Author:

Ida Stewart's poems have appeared in a number of journals, including FIELD, The Laurel Review, Linebreak, and MAYDAY Magazine, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA in creative writing from The Ohio State University and is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing at The University of Georgia. She's a co-editor of Unsplendid and has also served as an editorial assistant at The Georgia Review. A native of West Virginia, she currently lives in Athens, Georgia.

Review:

Ida Stewart's marvelous debut is pitch-perfect whether one thinks of pitch as a reference to the extraordinary qualities of sound here, or a reference to the velocity of this poet's verbal curveballs and changeups. Even the recurring image of mountains comes to represent pitch as the slope between gravity and levity, mayhem and harmony. Few poets combine such a musical ear with such transfixing insights and associations. Gloss is a brilliant and endlessly resonant first book. --Terrance Hayes

Even at her most playful, Ida Stewart brings deep feeling and serious insight to the page as she propels her readers from poem to poem. --The Journal

Ida Stewart asks the reader to slow down and reconsider what is usual and accepted. In doing so, she brilliantly leads the reader by the hand down a path of complex contemplation. --Flycatcher

Even at her most playful, Ida Stewart brings deep feeling and serious insight to the page as she propels her readers from poem to poem. --The Journal

Ida Stewart asks the reader to slow down and reconsider what is usual and accepted. In doing so, she brilliantly leads the reader by the hand down a path of complex contemplation. --Flycatcher

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