Theory of Mind: New & Selected Poems - Softcover

Ramke, Bin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1890650412 ISBN 13: 9781890650414

Publisher: Omnidawn, 2009

Synopsis

Drawing upon four decades of poetry and including an ample selection of new work, this perceptive collection shares a wealth of intimate experiences and compelling encounters with the world. Citing an extensive range of social, scientific, literary, and philosophical sources, each piece offers a lens of both telescopic and microscopic precision. Sharing insight into many private forms of suffering—mental illness, loss of loved ones, family crises—personal issues are used to assess continued struggles with the profound questions of what it means to be human, moral, and conscious. Directly responding to current social and cultural issues, these engaging meditations examine the complex interrelations of people with their environment, work, health, cultural upheaval, and natural disasters. Deftly detailing the essence of human existence, small instances of daily activity—from drinking tea to remembering childhood experiences—are brought to the forefront and gently articulate the value of human life.

About this title

About the Author:

Bin Ramke is the editor of the Denver Quarterly and teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Denver. He is the author of nine poetry collections, including Airs, Waters, Places; A Massacre of the Innocents; Tendril; and Wake.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. Since winning the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1978, Ramke has steadily released strong and strange books of poetry. He is the rare poet who seems to become more himself with each new book, rather than more like an imitation of himself. Nonetheless, perhaps due to the difficulty of much of his work, Ramke has remained a poet's poet. This much-needed and compact selection from his nine previous books serves as a helpful introduction to this poet, whose work straddles aesthetic camps one never knew shared borders—this is language poetry with a Southern twang, or experimental writing with clear, dire subject matter. From the stark clarity of his first poems (the only horse/ we owned died on Christmas Eve), Ramke has journeyed toward wholly original aesthetic ground on which his own often fragmentary words share the page, even the line, with passages from obscure texts, definitions, even mathematics. Yet even Ramke's oddest poems always keep a few subjects—fatherhood, knowledge of the self and the other, love, desire—at the forefront, wishing, at times, To kiss. To move/ mouth against mouth. And the new poems here are among Ramke's best. (Sept.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Omnidawn
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1890650412
• ISBN 13: 9781890650414
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200