Twist the Axe: A Horseplayer's Story - Softcover

Ragain, Maj

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0933087705 ISBN 13: 9780933087705

Publisher: Bottom Dog Press, 2002

Synopsis

Poetry. Prose. Cross Genre. "One way or another, Maj Ragain is going to touch you as you read his work. And you're going to like it. He may get you in the funny bone or you may find out for yourself that he sports the Tenderest Knockout Punch in the world. He also can wield a poleaxe ("The Last Horserace in Thessaloniki"); mainly he chooses to shuttle casually back and forth between what the Romans called gravitas and what Raymond Carver, in his last days, called gravy. It's a book about living life fully among others doing the same. The subject is the racetrack, but grace, in its many aspects, turns up in guise after guise. It's a book I bet you'll enjoy"-William Pitt Root. Maj Ragain combines poetry and journal entries with newspaper clippings, drawings, photographs and horse pedigrees in what Gary Gildner calls his "love affair with the horses and luck and life and sweet naming." The author has written three previous collections of poetry, including BURLEY ONE DARK SUCKER FIRED

About this title

Book Description

Twist the Axe: A Horseplayer's Story. Poems and Journals by Maj Ragain

About the Author

Maj Ragain (September 15, 1940- ). Midwest American Poet. Born into a small, southeastern Illinois farm town. Home tutored, raised on Vernor Lake. Maj finished a BA in English at Eastern Illinois University in 1962. In 1963, he earned a MA in English at the University of Illinois. He has been an "off and on" faculty member at Kent State University since 1969, where he obtained a Ph.D in 1990. An active representative of poetry in the Kent community(where he has resided permanently since 1980), he served for twenty years as host to the open poetry readings at the Brady Caf‚. The presence of others is commonplace in a Ragain poem, which takes aim at the spirit of the people he encounters, their stories, their tragedies, as well as his own search for the mystical life among family and friends. His first collection of poems, The Olney Dreadnot Book, was published in 1979(Shellys Press). A chap precedes, Jimmie the Vincennes Flyer(1977). Five other chapbooks were published in the 1980's before another collection titled Fresh Oil, Loose Gravel appeared in 1996 from Lakewood, Ohio's Burning Press. The book was a finalist in the 1996 Chilcote Awards of Excellence for Poetry. Shortly to follow was Burley One Dark Sucker Fired, a collection from Bottom Dog Press in 1998, who also released Twist The Axe: A Horseplayer's Story in 2001. The poem "Alton Memorial/To My Son, From Greece" was reprinted for the Diet Temple in 2002. Alton Memorial is the hospital where his son Sean was born. The hospital is also where Ragain spent part of his seventh year undergoing treatment for polio. The poem densely weaves a series of memories that come to a close with Sean's birth. He then persuades his son to "Quit your job. Come to Greece. We'll drink beer all day in the tavernas and talk baseball." Between June 15 and September 4, 2004, Verde Gallery of Champaign, Illinois presented Vision to Verse/Verse to Vision: A Visual and Poetic Dialogue, a collaboration of "shared paintings and poetry, images and words, for two years..." featuring Ragain's poetry and Jessica Damen's paintings. A chapbook was published for this event. In 2006, Pavement Saw Press released A Hungry Ghost Surrenders His Tacklebox.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bottom Dog Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0933087705
• ISBN 13: 9780933087705
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 164