Title:
Black aperture : poems / Matt Rasmussen.
ISBN:
9780807150863
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2013]
©2013
Physical Description:
64 pages ; 22 cm
General Note:
"LSU Press Paperback Original" -- Title page verso.
"Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of the American Poets--cover.
Contents:
I Trajectory -- after suicide -- the orange leaves -- 747 -- the wave -- and God said. -- I am not a poem -- tom black -- field with whales -- after suicide -- in the whoever's hotel room this is -- vacation cage -- monet as a verb -- we're not the stars, we're what's between them -- seed -- chekhov's gun -- II elegy in x parts -- III outgoing -- land o' lakes -- a poem in which leaves again figure prominently -- burial -- aperture.
Summary:
In his moving debut collection, Matt Rasmussen faces the tragedy of his brother's suicide, refusing to focus on the expected pathos, blurring the edge between grief and humor. In Outgoing, the speaker erases his brother's answering machine message to save his family from "the shame of dead you / answering calls." In other poems, once-ordinary objects become dreamlike. A buried light bulb blooms downward, a "flower / of smoldering filaments". A refrigerator holds an evening landscape, a "tinfoil lake", "vegetables / dying in the crisper". Destructive and redemptive, Black Aperture opens to the complicated entanglements of mourning: damage and healing, sorrow and laughter, and torment balanced with moments of relief.
Subject Term:
Genre:
OCLC Number:
ocn814389655
Availability:
Eagan - Wescott~1
