Curious Conduct (American Poets Continuum) - Softcover

Beaumont, Jeanne Marie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1929918518 ISBN 13: 9781929918515

Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd., 2004

Synopsis

Curious are the workings of history and governments, the relations between the sexes, the behavior of animals, the life of objects, the labors of art, and the transformations of the imagination. In exploring these subjects, Jeanne Marie Beaumont’s poems in Curious Conduct pursue and develop their own mode of investigation, a way into their subjects whether it be by interrogation, time travel, anthropomorphism or other conductive strategies.

Jeanne Marie Beaumont’s first book, Placebo Effects (W.W. Norton), was selected by William Matthews as a winner in the 1997 National Poetry Series. For seven years she was publisher and co-editor of the literary magazine American Letters & Commentary. Currently, Beaumont teaches creative writing at Rutgers University.

About this title

About the Author

Jeanne Marie Beaumont earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University. Her first book, Placebo Effects, was selected by William Matthews as a winner in the 1997 National Poetry Series and was published by W.W. Norton. With Claudia Carlson, she co-edited the anthology The Poets' Grimm: Twentieth Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales (Story Line). For seven years she was publisher and co-editor of the literary magazine American Letters & Commentary. Beaumont teaches creative writing at Rutgers University.

From Publishers Weekly

Beaumont (Placebo Effects) co-edited The Poets' Grimm, an anthology of modern poems based on fairy tales, and a vivid fairy tale sensibility pervades her most original work in this second collection, complete with wolves, frog princes and modern-day Cinderellas. Some poems depend on tour-de-force conceits: one shows what rocks would say if they had their own language (the rock's speech begins "I only dance when I'm thrown"), while another gives ingenuous excerpts "From the Book of the Boot." Nineteenth-century Europe (from the Napoleonic wars to the rise of the parasol and the heyday of absinthe) makes another inspiration for Beaumont's glittery works, whose contemporary analogues range from Brenda Hillman to James Tate, mixing extended analogies with teasing non sequiturs: "If it weren't so sunny in this room/ we'd worry about the economy." Beaumont's self-portraits are likewise enticingly diverse: in "Regime" her contemporary speaker is a Baroque ruler in an oil painting; in "Circa 1812" "I'm in my early life as a fly, and I skim from table to/ table in search of the best gossip, best jam." Hanging over it all, and saving it from frivolity, is an air of persistent unhappiness: Beaumont's smorgasbord of techniques and scenes depicts a world "where the poor dog must sing for his supper/ on national television," and where "We are only as happy as our last dream."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1929918518
• ISBN 13: 9781929918515
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 84