Shouting Down the Silence: Verse Poems, 1988-2001 - Softcover

Marcus, Morton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887394531 ISBN 13: 9780887394539

Publisher: Creative Arts Book Co, 2002

Synopsis

In his first book of verse poems since 1988, Morton Marcus shows the variety of moods, range of subject matter, and striking imagery that have characterized his poetry from the start. His imaginative leaps become somersaults of language through which he lands on both feet in the everyday world, engaging the most salient aspects of the human condition. Since 1988, Marcus has published two books of prose poems, but he has continued to write his most private meditations, many of which make up the contents of this volume, in verse. Divided into four sections, Shouting Down the Silence begins with personal memories of childhood and adulthood, and in Part 2 examines the poet's travels in the Balkans and Greece. Part 3 is a selection from a sequence of anecdotal pieces about great artists, and the last section is a potpourri of other poems composed during the last thirteen years.

About this title

About the Author

MORTON MARCUS is the author of eight volumes of poetry and one novel, among them The Santa Cruz Mountain Poems, Pages from a Scrapbook of Immigrants, and When People Could Fly. He has published over 400 poems in literary journals, and has had work selected to appear in more than 76 anthologies in the United States, Europe and Australia. His ninth book, Moments Without Names: New & Selected Prose Poems, was published earlier this year as part of the Marie Alexander Series of White Pine Press.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"Shouting Down the Silence"

When I lie down to sleep
and the hairs on my body stir,
somewhere, I'm sure of it, the trees
down the length of a mountain range
are fluttering in the moonlit breeze.
Not that this explains anything or restores
or even breaks the endless silence
of the broken pitcher lying on its side
in an abandoned shack, the rusty coat hangers
in empty lots, or any discarded thing,
nor that my mind will possibly invent a thought
that will change the contours of the universe
and show me a pathway through it,
but that at the moment of my death
I will be able to let my last breath go
with the same unthinking assurance
as that breeze sailing down the mountain range,
knowing that to every furred rib cage it ruffles,
and to every leaf and wing tip it nudges,
it murmurs in my voice, like a shout
down the silence, "I was here."

Edition details

• Publisher: Creative Arts Book Co
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0887394531
• ISBN 13: 9780887394539
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 104