Noise and Stories: Poems by John Graves Morris - Softcover

Morris, John Graves

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0911051562 ISBN 13: 9780911051568

Publisher: Richard M. Belden, 2008

Synopsis

With a bow to recent masters like Justice, Wright, and even Nemerov, John Morris's poems explore the uncertain footing of middle age. The characters we meet are clear-eyed, straight-faced, occasionally nonplussed. They're uncertain of their allegiance to either comfort or anguish. And their ciphering of the debts and credits of their days creates little dramas we can recognize as something like our own. Cars are "rust-colored, late-modeled;" poems "twist into failing origami;" and an old high school yearbook "needs a vacation. It needs a drink." The lines dissect moments and events as if each implication must be given its due. Sentences surprise and involve us, somehow intuiting their own inevitable ends.
Richard Terrill, author of Fakebook and Coming Late
to Rachmaninoff

This is the new West--harsh sunlight shining onto office complexes and strip malls and--just past the purview of respectable people--onto pawn shops, Indian casinos and meth labs too. These elegiac poems describe the loneliness of eking out a decent life in an inhospitable context, keeping lassitude at bay, the depleted sense your recent last shot at joy, your grief over someone's death by natural causes, the meted-out unhappiness that is our human portion, constitute problems too small, too merely ordinary, to matter. These poems depict transgression and desperation in local headlines but also the transgression and desperation we find as we examine our own quiet, obedient lives. Even while Noise and Stories mines this vein of mute despair, it celebrates life's constancy, its "motion, texture, smack, & murmur."
Debra Monroe, author of Newfangled and Shambles

John Morris is a poet of great versatility, sensitivity, and perception. He takes a moment from our lives, crystallizes it into forever. This is lovely work.
Rilla Askew, author of Fire In Beulah and Harpsong

John Graves Morris' first collection of poems is a work of many years where music and image clock one another for all the surprise and sharp edges that poetic voice admits to-these sometimes elevated and lyric voices are both true and memorable. What a wonderful volume.
Norman Dubie, author of Ordinary
Mornings of a Coliseum and The
Insomniac Liar of Topo

About this title

About the Author

Rick Belden has been writing for most of his life and exploring the use of creative expression, dreamwork, personal mythology, and listening to the body as tools for self-healing since 1989. He is the author of Iron Man Family Outing: Poems about Transition into a More Conscious Manhood, a book widely used in the United States and internationally by therapists, counselors, and men's groups as an aid in the exploration of masculine psychology and men's issues, and as a resource for men who grew up in dysfunctional, abusive, or neglectful family systems.

Rick's second book, Scapegoat s Cross: Poems about Finding and Reclaiming the Lost Man Within, is awaiting publication. He regularly posts poetry, short essays, and other writing at his blog, poetry, dreams, and the body.

In addition to his ongoing activities as a writer, Rick has been working in the information technology field for over 25 years as a software engineer/designer/developer, systems analyst, business analyst, and consultant for numerous organizations in both the public and private sector. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

body memory

my elbow remembers
riding my rocking horse off the front porch

my skin remembers
slap of the flyswatter metal wire handle

my tongue remembers
bar of soap shoved in my mouth

my hand remembers

spilled milk on the first day of first grade my stomach remembers
crying in front of everyone 'cause I lost the fight

my knee remembers
wait for me daddy before I fell + broke my leg

my feet remember
please teach ricky how to skip

pinned to my kindergarten shirt
my chin remembers

falling out of bed into a
daddy's mad again hot sunday night

my nose remembers
can't breathe comic books in ragweed darkness

my fingers remember
building model rockets in a cool summer basement

my neck remembers
father's hands closing tight around my throat

my ears remember
mother screaming stop it dick stop it.

time passes but nothing is lost
I can't fool myself
my body remembers everything.

Edition details

• Publisher: Richard M. Belden
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0911051562
• ISBN 13: 9780911051568
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96