The Cartographer's Ink - Softcover

Elliott, Okla

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1630450103 ISBN 13: 9781630450106

Publisher: NYQ Books, 2014

Synopsis

In Okla Elliott's first full-length poetry collection, he seamlessly integrates history, philosophy, science, and personal narrative to form a literary geography that is at once erudite and accessible. Ranging from rural Kentucky to post-Soviet Russia to ancient Egypt, these poems invite the reader on a unique aesthetic and intellectual journey.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Okla Elliott possesses a capacious mind that here integrates his complicated and informative personal geography, philosophical investigation, a touching lyricism, and an attractive sense of humor. The result is a brilliant collection.

-Kelly Cherry, former poet laureate of Virginia and author of Hazard and Prospect: New and Selected Poems
 
 
This impressive first book ranges across memory, history, geography, and philosophy with a wider imagination than any poet writing today.

-Andrew Hudgins, finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize
 
 
Okla Elliott does not spare our sensitivities on any level [...] History, philosophy, and physics provide the landscape for adventure and interrogation alike.

-Amy King, author of Slaves Do These Things and I Want to Make You Safe
 
 
What hunger there is in these poems! What powers of mind, yet a big heart as well [...] Wolves, Russian proverbs, an old woman in a Berlin flower shop whistling a song the poet doesn't know: anything and everything is fair game. Oh, and along the way, Okla Elliott pretty much reinvents the sestina.

-David Kirby, finalist for the National Book Award and author of The House on Boulevard St: New and Selected Poems
 
 
Okla Elliott's work intersects poetry and philosophy--seamlessly and richly. The Cartographer's Ink reveals an original, moving voice. These are poems to be read and re-read and carried long in mind.

-Stephen Kuusisto, author of Letters to Borges and Only Bread, Only Light
 
 
The poems in Okla Elliott's debut volume, The Cartographer's Ink, chart--with linguistic dexterity and curious attentiveness--the intersecting geographical lines of space, time, and an always-already disintegrating self.

-LeeAnn Roripaugh, winner of the National Poetry Series and author of Dandarians

About the Author:

Okla Elliott is an assistant professor at Misericordia University. He holds a PhD in comparative literature from University of Illinois, an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State University, and a legal studies certificate from Purdue University. His work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, The Literary Review,The Los Angeles Review, New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, A Public Space, Subtropics, and elsewhere, as well as being included as a "notable essay" in Best American Essays 2015. His books include From the Crooked Timber (short fiction), The Cartographer's Ink (poetry), The Doors You Mark Are Your Own (a coauthored novel), Blackbirds in September: Selected Shorter Poems of Jürgen Becker (translation), and Pope Francis: The Essential Guide (nonfiction).

About this edition

• Publisher: NYQ Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1630450103
• ISBN 13: 9781630450106
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108