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Author Roberson, Ed.

Title To see the earth before the end of the world / Ed Roberson
Published Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press, ©2010

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 161 pages)
Series Wesleyan poetry
Wesleyan poetry.
Contents 1. Topoi -- 2. The world, then -- 3. Chromatic sequences -- 4. Playground and parks department music -- 5. Of the earth
Summary "In this dreamy collection, human features stand out as distinct then blend into the nature of the world surrounding them. We can't always tell plant from animal from mineral, and Roberson reminds us that in the end, as in poetry, such distinctions are moot."ùCamille T. Dungy
"Ed Roberson's labyrinthine, syntactically double-jointed lines work at a nervous, disconsolate pitch, peculiar insight and curious angle at the forefront of the tutorage they bring. His most compendious volume to date perhaps and certainly true to its title, To See the Earth Before the End of the World moves in many directions, often all at once, a 360-degree jitterbug waltz of a book."ùNathaniel Mackey
In To See the Earth Before the End of the World Ed Roberson presents us with 120 new poems, spoken in his unique voice and seen through his keen eye. Earth and sky, neighborhood life and ancient myths, the art of seeing and the architecture of the imagination all interweave in these poems. Recurring images and ideas construct a complex picture of our world, ourselves, and our manifold interconnections. The poems raise large questions about the natural world and our place in it, and they do not flinch from facing up to them
Roberson's poems range widely through different scales of time and space, invoking along the way history and myth, galaxies and garbage trucks, teapots and the history of photography, mating cranes and Chicago's political machine. This collection is composed of five sequences, each developing a particular constellation of images and ideas related to the vision of the whole. Various journeys join to become oneùan epic journey, invoking epic themes. There are songs of creation, pictures of the sorrows of war, celebrations of human labor and human society, a respect for tools and domestic utensils that are well made. In these poems, the deep background of the past tinges the colors of the present, and we hear the tragic tones of endings and laments, a pervading awareness of the tears in things. Most of all, we experience the exhilaration of a grand, sweeping Vision that enlarges our world. --Book Jacket
Notes English
Print version record
Subject American poetry -- 21st century.
American poetry.
American poetry -- African American authors.
Poetry, Modern -- 21st century.
FICTION -- General.
Poetry, Modern
American poetry -- African American authors
American poetry
Genre/Form Poetry
poetry.
Poetry
Poetry.
Poésie.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2010027094
ISBN 9780819569509
081956950X
9780819571014
0819571016
1283109700
9781283109703
9786613109705
6613109703