Tongue & Groove (Illinois Poetry Series) - Hardcover

Cramer, Stephen

3.75 out of 5 stars

12 ratings by Goodreads

9780252032363: Tongue & Groove (Illinois Poetry Series)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252032365 ISBN 13: 9780252032363

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2007

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Inspired and informed by the music and urban landscape of New York City, Tongue & Groove employs jazzy and descriptive language in a sweep of city-life experiences and memories. A passionate rendering of incidents in spaces that include the subway, a school for the handicapped, and The Museum of Modern Art, Stephen Cramer employs richly sensual language and a wide range of imagery. Alluring portrayals of butterfly migrations, graffiti, and city buses complement this collection’s connection to the everyday hoots, shouts, and yammer of the streets.

--or you can open

your mouth & stick out

your tongue,

take that fugitive impulse

from the artist’s hand

straight into your very gut

& maybe find out along the way

if the lime-green

of that inverted roof

& the burnt almond

of the filling station’s

roadside grasses

live up to their names.

--from “Taste”

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About the Author

Stephen Cramer is the author of Shiva’s Drum and a National Poetry Series winner.

Review

"I can think of almost no other young poet who can claim Stephen Cramer's lyric authority and self-possession. His odes and elegies capture the grit and delights of New York City in a manner that manages to capture something of Crane's sense of the marvelous with Oppen's descriptive acuity. This is to say he follows in the footsteps of the giants--and he shows himself abundantly capable of filling their shoes. Tongue & Groove is a ravishing book."--David Wojahn

"Cramer's Tongue and Groove celebrates Manhattan's vibrancy and the passionate self-expression of its denizens. . . . Tongue and Groove is a book of linguistic and formal performance. . . . This performance is fluent and exuberant."--Antioch Review

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