About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherYale University Press

ISBN-100300070322

ISBN-139780300070323

eBay Product ID (ePID)994754

Product Key Features

Book TitleMy Shining Archipelago

Number of Pages70 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year1997

TopicGeneral, American / General

IllustratorYes

GenrePoetry

AuthorTalvikki Ansel

Book SeriesYale Series of Younger Poets Ser.

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0 in

Item Weight3.8 Oz

Item Length0.9 in

Item Width0.6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN96-045321

Dewey Edition21

Dewey Decimal811/.54

SynopsisTalvikki Ansel's My Shining Archipelago is the winner of the 1996 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Her book gives us a front-row seat in a true Amazon theater where, says James Dickey in his foreword, ""Ansel finds her way of bringing into language the hellish magnificence, the perverse pluralism-more, always more, in the Amazon basin."" This cycle of ""freewheeling sonnets"" (Part II of the book) is cradled between sections of ambitious lyrics that recall Dutch still lifes in their intense scrutiny of pears, eels, gutted birds, to get at their essence. The book closes with a second sonnet cycle that inverts the subject of the first: instead of European civilization (the opera house Teatro Amazonas) coming to the jungle, an untutored human who is just learning to name things-Shakespeare's Caliban-is dropped in the middle of Elizabethan London., The winner of the 1996 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Talvikki Ansel for My Shining Archipelago. "Ansel s poetry is refreshingly original," says the distinguished poet and contest judge James Dickey. "She renders the heat, the closeness, the mystery, and the terrible fear of the undisclosed, the lurking, the waiting to happen. This is true imagination, true craft." Flemish Beauty Yesterday, all winter, I had not thought of pears, considered: pear . The tear-shaped, papery core, precise seeds. This one channeled through with worm tunnels. Bruises, a rotten half-- sometimes there's nothing left to drop into the pot. That phrase I could have said: "you still have us..." The knife slides easily beneath the skins, top to base, spiraling them away. The insubstantial us. It could as well be the pear talking to the river, turning to the grass ("you still have us"). Besides, it's just me a pear in my hand (the slop bucket full of peels)--and sometimes, yes, that seems enough: a pear-- this larger one, yellow-green, turning to red: "Duchess" maybe, "Devoe," or what I want to call it: "Flemish Beauty." When I can't sleep, I'll hold my hand as if I held a pear, my fingers mimicking the curve. The same curve as the newel post I've used for years, swinging myself up to the landing, always throwing my weight back. And always nails loosening, mid-bound., The winner of the 1996 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Talvikki Ansel for My Shining Archipelago. "Ansel's poetry is refreshingly original," says the distinguished poet and contest judge James Dickey. "She renders the heat, the closeness, the mystery, and the terrible fear of the undisclosed, the lurking, the waiting to happen. This is true imagination, true craft." Flemish Beauty Yesterday, all winter, I had not thought of pears, considered: pear . The tear-shaped, papery core, precise seeds. This one channeled through with worm tunnels. Bruises, a rotten half-- sometimes there's nothing left to drop into the pot. That phrase I could have said: "you still have us..." The knife slides easily beneath the skins, top to base, spiraling them away. The insubstantial us. It could as well be the pear talking to the river, turning to the grass ("you still have us"). Besides, it's just me a pear in my hand (the slop bucket full of peels)--and sometimes, yes, that seems enough: a pear-- this larger one, yellow-green, turning to red: "Duchess" maybe, "Devoe," or what I want to call it: "Flemish Beauty." When I can't sleep, I'll hold my hand as if I held a pear, my fingers mimicking the curve. The same curve as the newel post I've used for years, swinging myself up to the landing, always throwing my weight back. And always nails loosening, mid-bound.

LC Classification NumberPS3551.N69M9 1997