Travelling Music - Softcover

McElroy, Colleen J.

4.2

10 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1885266650 ISBN 13: 9781885266651

Publisher: Story Line Press, 1998

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Book by McElroy, Colleen J.

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Review:

Colleen McElroy is back and better than ever. Fans of her earlier works--especially "What Madness Brought Me Here," McElroy's stellar collection of new and selected poems, 1968-1988--will doubtless be ecstatic over this latest book of poems, which takes travel writing to new heights.

Based on her journeys, both physical and cerebral, "Travelling Music" eloquently showcases McElroy's grace, her unbending vision, and her sassiness, encrypted within language's lyrical sound. The first poem, "Under Skies with No Views," explains an experienced traveler's credo, wherein "all memory is dicey at the border," and the final frontier in adventure is to "let yourself wander off the page into sweet / sleep where you dream beautiful oceans / and water that desires nothing for itself." Her edgy humor permeates the poem "There's an Obi in the Dishwasher (and Other Useful Japanese Phrases)": "We are out here playing world travellers / with nothing between us and forever but English" in a zone where we "get lost every five minutes / regardless of our intentions." In "The End of Civilization As We Know It," McElroy laments the passing of "a time when the camera's whir and Tarzan's / yell filled the space," in a long lost locus of "Tarzan / in the orison of 78 rpm--Tarzan and everything / is bared." A daring date turns cool in "Eads Bridge Boogie Across the Mississippi" when the young people celebrating across state lines have to face going home: "trying to turn sober, and both of us, like Mama said: / looking like hell sued for murder."

And, because this collection is vintage McElroy, her irony often turns sharp. She speaks of crows that fled the scene with "payment for a ghetto full of stolen / Brer Rabbits and Aunt Nancys, / Words you invented each night." She envisions the prairie past, "how wives swallow dry prairie grass / Eating like songs its madness." If you haven't yet met Colleen McElroy, this collection is a terrific place to start. --Susan Swartwout

Review:

Atmospheric Pressure
Bo Jangles Visits The Studio
The Breakers At Split
Caution: This Woman Brakes For Memories
A Charleston For Florence Mills
Chitin
Delsey In The Window
Drawing In The Dark - A Jazz Monochrome: 1. Tenor Sax
Drawing In The Dark - A Jazz Monochrome: 2. Bass
Drawing In The Dark - A Jazz Monochrome: 3. Trumpet
Eads Bridge Boogie Across The Mississippi
The End Of Civilization As We Know It
Fascinating Rhythm
Five Black Beauties Romancing Dalmatia
Free-falling Nebraska
Heavy In The S-curves
Hooking Up With Ray Charles And The Great Percy Sledge In Madagascar
Jerry And Newt And That's All Folks!
Junkyards And Gangways
Lifting The Morning
A Little Traveling Music
Man Dances To Death In Storm
Paris Subway Tango
Poem For Kitaro Written At A Nude Beach On The Adriatic
Poetry Circuits
Puerto Cristo
Shelley At Sequim Inlet
The Sight Ot See
A Skardalija Walk In Three-quarter Time
Sojourn At The O'neill Summer Theatre: 1987
Sprung Sonnet For Dorothy Dandridge
Square Dancing The Adriatic
Sunrise: 40,000 Feet
There's An Obi In The Dishwasher (and Other Useful Japanese Phrases)
To The Crow Perched On Chief Sealth's Fingertips
Trompe L'oeil: Slovenia
Under Skies With No Views
The Verdict: Los Angeles 1992
Way Out Wardell Plays Belgrade
What The Jackrabbits Know
While Her Knees Keep A-knockin And Her Toes Keep A-rockin
Why The Sea Is For Salty Dogs
Wild Parrots Have Taken To Wintering In Ballard
With Josephine In Tangiers
You Dance And I Laugh For The Joy Of Dancing To Nothing
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder�

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