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Extravagant Rescues: Poems

by Brett Foster
foreword by Jeffrey Galbraith

Northwestern University Press, 2019
Paper: 978-0-8101-4054-7 | eISBN: 978-0-8101-4055-4
Library of Congress Classification PS3606.O7496A6 2019
Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

How far from our imperfect human selves have we traveled? How shall we recover what is left, live within our man-made technologies built to be more powerful than us, and still keep a sense of humor? Extravagant Rescues, a sublime collection of poetry, lays bare the human and poetic brilliance of a man immersed in capturing human beings’ mortal splendor and frailty within their own technology and flaws.

The poems ask questions with hymnlike couplets, in a language of the gospel of empathy. We are allowed to rethink our choices, question and be wary of our machinery, and, in the end, with metaphors that channel feelings of loss, humor, and compassion, we are reminded “to come, and dream, with eyes wide open / and set within the vessels of our waking selves, / of ever more intricate schemes, extravagant rescues.”

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

BRETT FOSTER (1973–2015) was an associate professor of English at Wheaton College. A past Wallace Stegner and Elizabethan Club fellow, his poetry and criticism has appeared in Raritan, the Kenyon Review, Best New Poets 2007, and Books & Culture, among other publications. His book The Garbage Eater was published by Northwestern University Press in 2011.

JEFFREY GALBRAITH teaches English literature and creative writing at Wheaton College. His scholarly work has appeared in the journal Restoration and the edited collection Invoking Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century British Imagination. His poems and reviews have appeared in Cresset, Yemassee, RHINO, Southern Humanities Review, the Florida Review, and Harvard Review.

REVIEWS

"In his poem 'For a Young Software Designer, Who Never Sleeps' Brett Foster imagines a 'modest vision of some mastery to come.' Modesty and mastery combine in Extravagant Rescues to remarkable, moving effect. Foster turns his formally inventive, deeply humane wit to a dazzling array of subjects, from Augustine and the Odyssey to George Clooney, iPods, and 'Avery DaVinci,' the poet's doodling daughter. From 'behind the wheel at the corner of Providence/and Stadium,' Foster negotiates intimacy, mortality, historical disaster, hypothetical futures, and irreplaceable presents with humor and grace. This is a poetic voice to be cherished." —Clare Cavanagh, author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Contra Belly, 1
+
Upon News of the Important Fossil, 3
BC Prospect, 4
Times Square the First Time, 5
My Favorite Bollywood Film, 6
About Your Delivery-Room Video on YouTube, 7
Polaroid Elegy, 8
Which One Day Would You Choose to Live Over Again?, 10
First Apartment Near St. Mary’s, 11
Our Nostos, 12
Found & Lost, 16
Improbable Rescue of the Heart, 17
Recovery, Gulf Coast, 19
+
Instruction and Delight, 21
Upon Watching Once Again The Empire Strikes Back, 22
Adulescentia, 23
Airport-Uh-Oh Poem, 24
No, You Misheard, 25
Silent Couple at Rievaulx Abbey, 26
George Clooney, 27
We Strivers All, 28
July Fourth, with Vampires, 29
O Capolavoro, 31
+
Psychomachia, 34
Three Citations on Our Nature, 35
Elysium, 36
Sonnet, 39
Summer Teaching at an Oxford College, 40
To David Hooker, 41
Discussing Social Media with Her, 42
Beginning of an Elegy, with iPad, 43
At a Cabin Near Barronvale Bridge, 44
+
Artes Liberales, 46
Memento Mori, with Summer Fair, 48
Request Overheard on a Car Radio, 49
Meditation on “In Memoriam,” 50
The State We’re In, 51
The Tree Felled, The Tree Raised, 52
+
Happiness, Carolina Highway, 54
Quiet Ars Poetica, 55
Alternative Titles for the Book You Are Holding in Your Hands, 57
Lexical Reverie, 59
Spatulamantic, 60
On Leonardo’s “Figures to Represent Labor,” 61
Avery da Vinci, Our Lady of the Western Suburbs, 62
Missive, 63
On Stanley Spencer’s Travoys with Wounded Soldiers, 64
+
From a Plane Window West of San Diego, 69
Good Night, 70
The Opposite of ‘Lov’, 71
For a Young Software Designer, Who Never Sleeps, 72
Looking Back on the Era of YouTube, 73
On the Way to Where We’re Going, 74
On the Numbness That Will Be Our Future, 76
Passing Thought on Apocalypse, 77

Horatian Valediction, 79

notes, 80

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