Spring (National Poetry Series) - Softcover

Buchanan, Oni

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252075641 ISBN 13: 9780252075643

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2008

Synopsis

2009 Massachusetts Book Awards Winner

Representing nothing less than a tour-de-force of formal invention and emotional intensity, Oni Buchanan’s Spring encompasses radically contrasting work. Ecstatic, visually intricate rhapsodies are juxtaposed with tight, sonnet-like poems, and wispy columns of verse brush up against large-scale epics and kinetic text. This collection’s point of departure is the paradox of existence as an individual in a political and violent world. All of the formal innovations in this book have in common an urgent need for texture and polyphony, and the poems attempt to discover how to fulfill the individual human responsibility of surviving as a resiliently loving and hopeful living creature. An accompanying multimedia compact disc offers a full Flash-animated version of the printed kinetic work, “The Mandrake Vehicles.”

About this title

About the Author

Oni Buchanan, a conservatory-trained concert pianist, is the author of the poetry collection What Animal.

Reviews

In this adventurous mix of taut lyrics, dramatic monologues and free-ranging typographical experiments, Buchanan (What Animal), who is also a pianist, has an ear for mellifluous runs and beautifully, at times humorously, evoked emotions: "the vast veld, the funnel of black wings/ landing on the rack en masse, a smoothing,/ a soothing of black, the indivisible plumage." This same musical sensibility, however, can lead the poems into murky, precious territory ("u r so Mesozoic era"). Images of the natural world and scientific language abound in this National Poetry Series-winning second book, selected by Mark Doty. "Dear lonely animal," begins a typical poem from the series of that name, "I miss you. The other animals/ are looking at porn again./ I will never dress or disrobe." This voice is clear and direct, a startling contrast to the book's more coded closing sections, such as "The Mandrake Vehicles," in which Buchanan's natural-world preoccupations and fecund music explode into the experimental, fractal territory, a la Jorie Graham and Alice Fulton. There are accompanying notes to the "paper" version of this series, as well as digital version on a multimedia CD included with the book. Both are dazzling displays of textual hijinks and combine to make an interesting foray into hypertextuality. (Oct.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252075641
• ISBN 13: 9780252075643
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108