Thieves' Latin (Iowa Poetry Prize) - Softcover

Shippy, Peter Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0877458405 ISBN 13: 9780877458401

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 2003

Synopsis

A jittery, frequently uncomfortable collection of poems serves up an ironic and often kind of view of the American landscape and culture. Winner of the 2002 Iowa Poetry Prize. Original. (Poetry)

About this title

About the Author

Peter Jay Shippy holds a BFA from Emerson College and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Epoch, ,Poetry Ireland, Another Chicago Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Expression, Five A.M., Slope, X-Connect, the Harvard Review, and the Denver Quarterly. In 2002, he was award-ed an artist's grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and named adjunct professor of the year by the Gold Key Honor Society of Emerson College, where he has taught since 1987.

Review

''What binds the marvelous to the mundane is the constant arc of mind. In Thieves' Latin, Peter Jay Shippy articulates that mind, catching its accents in acts of nature, of culture, and of the Divine. Here I sense, a bright, bright motion, and it is thrilling.''

''Nothing/can replace the intimacy between/an object and its human, ' says Peter Jay Shippy. The intimacy of all these poems fills in the gaps between language-objects and reader-subjects. Shippy's strange little machines of words are all kinetic, disturbing, and weirdly graceful, unlike anything else available in American poetry. A dazzling book.''

In Peter Jay Shippy's debut collection, the function of image proliferates, Reading, I'm reminded of Andy Warhol's comment in his journal: 'The snow looks very beautiful, real even.' Everywhere in Thieves' Latin the natural is enhanced or destroyed by the human imagination. Shippy has written a surrealist elegy for the earth, 'whistling hardcore gabba and / breakbeat techno versions of ''The Internationale.'' A fierce accomplishment.''

Edition details

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0877458405
• ISBN 13: 9780877458401
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 100