A01=Thomas Reiter
Author_Thomas Reiter
Category=DCF
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
Product details
- ISBN 9780807125434
- Dimensions: 139 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Feb 2000
- Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In Pearly Everlasting, Thomas Reiter crafts authentic lives, both autobiographical and fictional, historical and contemporary, across a wide range of locales, maintaining a steady focus on the lore of occupations while revealing the speakers' crucial connection to the natural world. These poems come in earthtones- the colors of strenuous labor; dried flowers from a midwestern prairie; a centuries-old bone newly uncovered; the surf and sky, gold and coral deposits, of the West Indies; the pure soul of a freshly thawed stream; and pepperbush, Indian pipes, yellow gorse, anemones, pearly everlasting, spoken as lovingly as children's names.
Through a rich mix of lyrical and narrative forms, Reiter honors hard livelihoods that demand concentration of mind and muscle- Oregon Trail pioneers, farmers, railroad workers, natives and early colonists in the Caribbean, coal miners: ""Where else would boys from slagtip valleys / go but into the mines of Wales?"" The physicality and technique honed by seasoned whalers, however, contrast with the younger generation's skills: ""Our sons all work in tourist hotels. / Tell me where is the memory in that.""
Memory and the past, real or imagined, are palpable in Reiter's verse and often align in a kind of double exposure with the present."" At his window in the Stonehill Home / my grandfather invites me to watch / the prairie horizon, looking past / wheat fields and silos to where / once again it's 1887 / and a man is trampled unyoking oxen."" And resonating through the poems are botanical details, gritty and convincing, never ready-made or sentimental. In Pearly Everlasting, flora can be as close and important as family members, with a long-distance reach in emotion and significance: ""My mind fills with rootings, annuals / and perennials, their stems moving / through furniture, tools, utensils, / their blossoms crowding under sailcloth / so I can hardly breathe / or cry out, I am Esther Pennell, / or see the Trail happening before me / in its penitence of yokes.""
For Reiter as well as his poems' personae, self-awareness becomes a matter of discovery, passion, and a finely wrought wisdom: ""If a riverbed over time / changes by oxbow and undercut, / where am I now? . . . / My weight is nothing. I'm here / for the time the river gives me.
Through a rich mix of lyrical and narrative forms, Reiter honors hard livelihoods that demand concentration of mind and muscle- Oregon Trail pioneers, farmers, railroad workers, natives and early colonists in the Caribbean, coal miners: ""Where else would boys from slagtip valleys / go but into the mines of Wales?"" The physicality and technique honed by seasoned whalers, however, contrast with the younger generation's skills: ""Our sons all work in tourist hotels. / Tell me where is the memory in that.""
Memory and the past, real or imagined, are palpable in Reiter's verse and often align in a kind of double exposure with the present."" At his window in the Stonehill Home / my grandfather invites me to watch / the prairie horizon, looking past / wheat fields and silos to where / once again it's 1887 / and a man is trampled unyoking oxen."" And resonating through the poems are botanical details, gritty and convincing, never ready-made or sentimental. In Pearly Everlasting, flora can be as close and important as family members, with a long-distance reach in emotion and significance: ""My mind fills with rootings, annuals / and perennials, their stems moving / through furniture, tools, utensils, / their blossoms crowding under sailcloth / so I can hardly breathe / or cry out, I am Esther Pennell, / or see the Trail happening before me / in its penitence of yokes.""
For Reiter as well as his poems' personae, self-awareness becomes a matter of discovery, passion, and a finely wrought wisdom: ""If a riverbed over time / changes by oxbow and undercut, / where am I now? . . . / My weight is nothing. I'm here / for the time the river gives me.
Thomas Reiter has published two previous books of poetry, River Route and Crossovers. A native of Dubuque, Iowa, he is Wayne D. McMurray Professor of Humanities at Monmouth University in New Jersey.
