Meek, Anna George. Acts of contortion.Univ. of Wisconsin Press. 68p. c2002.0-299-18264-9. $12.95. SA In the first stanza stan·za n. One of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines. [Italian; see stance. of the long and moving title poem that concludes this Brittingham Prize-winning collection, Meek meek adj. meek·er, meek·est 1. Showing patience and humility; gentle. 2. Easily imposed on; submissive. states "The articulate carnival is molded I from vague feeling." Assuming poetry to be among those written and spoken arts of articulation, it is also true that in some cases the awareness of real art, of poetry, comes from that same source, something rather abstract but very real. Acts of Contortion is such a volume, one in which the reader simply knows, intuits on some level, that he/she is in the presence of honest emotion and charged language. It accounts for some narrative ambiguity where the impact of story is conveyed more clearly by tone than by linear logic, even somehow addresses the poet's own frustration with words, "...of my own outbursts, crying/that I will always be a citizen of this distance/and the tremors I cannot exchange I for words or music..." These poems are a marriage of compassion and the artistic blending of music and the physical world where "Mahler's Ninth Symphony cans I for a thousand musicians: twenty-six bones/in each musician's hand. All that music!/All those moving parts Moving parts are the components of a device that undergo continuous or frequent motion, most commonly rotation. "Parts" only include the mechanical components which does not include fuel, or any other gas or liquid. ." But the vastness of this volume's scope and the depth of its insight might best be seen in "Orchestration orchestration Art of choosing which instruments to use for a given piece of music. The sections of the orchestra historically were separate ensembles: the stringed instruments for indoors, the woodwind instruments for outdoors, the horns for hunting, and trumpets and drums ," where Meek says "We must desire precision/and love approximation approximation /ap·prox·i·ma·tion/ (ah-prok?si-ma´shun) 1. the act or process of bringing into proximity or apposition. 2. a numerical value of limited accuracy. ." It is obvious that this poet is striving for the former while realizing that only the latter is possible. That struggle, truly, is the realm of art. James Beschta, Barre Barre (bă`rē), city (1990 pop. 9,482), Washington co., central Vt., SE of Montpelier; settled late 18th cent., inc. 1894. Granite quarrying, which began in the region in the early 19th cent., is still important. , MA |
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