Blue Tango: POEMS - Softcover

Van Walleghen, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 025206044X ISBN 13: 9780252060441

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1989

Synopsis

A selection of poems evoke ambivalence, anger, and tenderness, addressing both the poet's past and present with precise detail.

About this title

Reviews

Tightly contained in distinctive two-line stanzas, these poems confront the poet's past and present, evoking ambivalence, anger and tenderness without excess. Van Wallenghen ( The Wichita Poems ) packs clean, sharp images and unusual detail into narrative; he takes risks, revealing a fascination with society's aberrants (a 400-pound man, childhood pariahs, alcoholics) and finding no subject taboo. Of a visit to a slaughterhouse, he remembers "all that precious offal / grocery stores disdained-- / whole hog heads for headcheese / fresh duck blood, fresh feet / . . . my father's friend would shout / above the squealing, bleating / foaming panic of the animals." By paralleling memories of his childhood experiences with ruminations on his own daughter's behavior, Van Wallenghen concludes that fundamental responses don't change over time: fear and uncertainty always hover; though they can't be mastered, they can be understood--"You'd have to be four years old / and afraid so far of nothing / in this life but monsters / big dogs and snakes to trust / this hanging on, this tilting world."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 025206044X
• ISBN 13: 9780252060441
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104