From Scratch - Hardcover

Eshleman, Clayton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1574230719 ISBN 13: 9781574230710

Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, 1998

Synopsis

First edition, one of 200 hardcover trade copies. Table of contents, endnotes. Biograhical sketch of the author, with photograph, follows text. A collection of poetry. 190, 4 pages. quarter cloth, paper-covered boards, paper spine label, acetate dust jacket. 8vo..

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Eshleman's latest is a mixed bag: three long poems focus on the artists Nora Jaffe and Chaim Soutine, and the poet Antonin Artaud; several shorter ones contemplate Upper Paleolithic cave art; others ponder works by de Kooning or take inspiration from Blake's heroism. (Eshleman appends 10 pages of endnotes to explain all of his influences and borrowings.) There's much to admire in their eclecticism, sheer expressive energy and stretches of musicality, but Eshleman's main tendency in this 13th collection is toward excess: poems dart among subjects and digressions, turn diarylike in their ramblings, and plunge into nearly numbing description, particularly of paintings. Some will wonder whether Eshleman's eagerness to document his sensibility has left him too little time for revision, but that may be the point here. In defending his endnotes (one of the book's most entertaining sections) Eshleman disparages "a purist vision of the poem as a kind of mystical flower without a stem, rootwork, or dirt." The reader appreciates a glimpse into the workings of this poet's inspiration, but may not be willing to venture far into the muck. Still, the intermittent "killed-out image/ the sensation of a plunging rise,/ a fall so total it swerved into ascent" will be enough incentive for others. (Sept.) journal.

Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review:

"One is tempted to think of Eshleman as the H. P. Lovecraft of postmodernist poetry. His images possess a disquieting sense of actuality, of being alive. They are not, however, merely sensationalistic effects but are symptoms of a state of mind, incarnations of psychic events. The anguish and ecstasies of an unquenchable thirst for more life, of a depth psychology based on an archetypal perspective. A movement out of ego into psyche. A movement out of the egg of circumscribed subjectivity into the timeless labyrinths of the underworld." --John Olson, American Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1574230719
• ISBN 13: 9781574230710
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 190