Straight Out of View - Softcover

Sutphen, Joyce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 093010028X ISBN 13: 9780930100285

Publisher: Holy Cow! Press, 2001

Synopsis

"Joyce Sutphen's first collection reveals a poet of place whose assured, straightforward style seems sprung from the Minnesota farmlands where she was raised."—Publishers Weekly

Awarded the 1994 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, these poems are alive with motion, poems in the act of transformation even as the words fly onto the page. While rooted in the Midwest, the poems extend far beyond the homegrown, moving from the sudden disaster of "Tornado Warning" to sweeping landscapes of the American West to London, where in gentler tones she confronts Sylvia Plath. Sutphen's voice is refreshing throughout, capturing emotion with swift imagistic strokes.

Joyce Sutphen teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota.

Crossroads

The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.
The second half of my life will be water
over the cracked floor of these desert years.
I will land on my feet this time,
knowing at least two languages and who
my friends are. I will dress for the
occasion, and my hair shall be
whatever color I please.
Everyone will go on celebrating the old
birthday, counting the years as usual,
but I will count myself new from this
inception, this imprint of my own desire.

The second half of my life will be swift,
past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,
asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.
The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,
fingers shifting through fine sands,
arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.
There will be new dreams every night,
and the drapes will never be closed.
I will toss my string of keys into a deep
well and old letters into the grate.

The second half of my life will be ice
breaking up on the river, rain
soaking the fields, a hand
held out, a fire,
and smoke going
upward, always up.

About this title

Review

After Visiting The Oracle
Against Decay
Announcing Augie
Augie And The Pentecostals
Augie Keeps Godot Waiting
Augie On The North Shore
Augie, Walking In January
The Beginnings Of Philosophy
Burning The Woods Of My Childhood
Canyon
Civil Defense
Coil And Halt
Crossroads
Death Becomes Me
Double Exposure
Dreaming You Out Of Honduras
Edgar's Dream
Elegy
Evening Angelus
The Famous Poet's Grave
The Farm
Feeding The New Calf
Fishing New York
From Out The Cave
Grand Canyon, Early December
Great Salt Lake
Holland Park At Dusk
Home To The Late Late Movie
Household Muse
How The Puritans Took London
In Black
In Praise Of Unlovely Voices
In Quest Of Agates
In The Distant Dark
A Kind Of Deliverance
Last Duet
Living In The Body
Lottery 1969
Lunar Landing
Momento Mori
Mr. Muse
My Father Comes To The City
Near The British Museum
Not Quite Born Again
Of Thee, I Cannot Sing
The Old Extreme
Out Of Orbit
The Plaza
Please Follow These Instructions
Potato Meditation
Prayer For
Reading Sylvia Plath In London
Refugee Dream
Riding East To Dover
Rural Route 2
Self-defense
Solitaire
Somewhere, Close To Dover Beach
St. Joe, The Angelus
Straight Out Of View
Suppose Death Comes Like This
Tapping The Lid
Tornado Warning
Waiting For You
Ways Of Passing
What You Wanted
Work
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

From Library Journal

Moving away from the urban subject matter it has favored in the past, Barnard has awarded this year's New Women Poets prize to the work of an older poet from the rural Midwest who writes about her father's farm, unpeopled nature, and occasional sojourns into such foreign territories as London and the Grand Canyon. Sutphen has a talent for scenic description; about the Great Salt Lake, she writes: "Plagues of midges sweep the salt-white beach;/coppered snakes swirl in the silken lake./Still we go in." She does as well with suburbia: "each house with/its drapes parted slightly, wafer of lamplight/caught on bare walls... the/refrigerators are opening, letting out the cold."' Unfortunately, some of the poems are marred by a rambling self-consciousness that substitutes for self-awareness: "I hoped they would remember me, my notebook/and cappuccino, how I sat for hours watching/the children feed pigeons, indulgent in/this life across the globe." Very much a first collection, but vivid and readable.?Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Holy Cow! Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 093010028X
• ISBN 13: 9780930100285
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 106