Softcover

ISBN 10: 1882509064 ISBN 13: 9781882509065

Publisher: Alef Books, 2002

Poetry. Michael Ruby's poems are an intersection of the various possibilities of poetry and language. Many artistic movements echo through these pages-surrealism, constructivism, expressionism, confessional poetry, language poetry, even I Crepuscolari and the Prairie School. There are elegies for the early dead, texts to accompany artworks, investigations of meaning and parts of speech. There are transcriptions of inner voices and of the ordinary flow of thoughts and road signs on a night drive. These vivid poems take place on "5th Ave. and Carroll St. in Brooklyn" and "in one of Lithuania's doomed shetls," but also where a dog might play "Schoenberg in the silver and black plazas, balancing the Santa Maria, the Mayflower and the first slave ship on this head."

About the Author:

Michael Ruby's second book of poetry, WINDOW ON THE CITY, was published by BlazeVOX Books in Buffalo in 2006, and his prose FLEETING MEMORIES is appearing as an ebook this year from Ugly Duckling Presse in Brooklyn. His long poem "First Names" was Mudlark No. 24 (2004). He's also the editor of David Herfort's WASHTENAW COUNTY JAIL AND OTHER WRITINGS (Xlibris, 2005), a 1970s prison memoir. "Titles & First Lines" is part of a recently finished poetry book, COMPULSIVE WORDS. Other recent poems can be found in ezines La Petite Zine, Shampoo, BlazeVOX, Unpleasant Event Schedule, word for/word, GutCult, mprsnd and Dusie. He's currently working on several new poetry books and a prose history of the families of his great-grandparents in Eastern Europe and the U.S. He lives with his wife and three daughters in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and works as a journalist.

From Publishers Weekly:

Of the 29 poems Michael Ruby has composed for At an Intersection, it may be the "Overexposed Faces" that endure the longest: "A face behind a comb's teeth/ A face splashed with blue dye/ A face behind bars." Ruby, who works at the copy desk of the Wall Street Journal, completed an MFA at Brown in the early '80s, letting this debut come together as poems crossed his path: "Now that they're so near,/ in one of the cubbyholes at/ my post office branch,/ I should be celebrating." His book is the seventh title for Alef Books, which won support from the Academy of American Poets' Eric Mathieu King fund.
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