University of Iowa Press, 1999 eISBN: 978-1-58729-305-4 | Paper: 978-0-87745-658-2 Library of Congress Classification PS3568.A446W35 1999 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Throughout Bin Ramke's book of poems, certain elements recur insistently: birds and boyhood, betrayal and longings that careen between flesh and faith.
Ramke refuses to distinguish between scientific and poetic approaches to knowing the world. In Wake, the poet does not pretend to offer wisdom but instead offers words, and the words are given as much freedom as possible. The title itself resonates with all its presumptive meanings: an alternative to dreaming, a ceremony binding the living to the dead, and the pattern left briefly in water by boats—handwriting as turbulence in a fluid medium.
Elements of the world at large are woven into the language of these poems, resulting in a conversation among transcripts from the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer, passages from the notebooks of John James Audubon, a meditation on the Book of Daniel, whole epic sentences out of Milton, and the modest observations of the struggling poet himself.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Bin Ramke has published seven previous books of poems, including Massacre of the Innocents (Iowa, 1995), Wake (Iowa, 1999), and one of the first Kuhl House Poets books, Airs, Waters, Places (Iowa, 2001). The editor of the Denver Quarterly, he teaches creative writing at the University of Denver and at the Art Institute of Chicago.
REVIEWS
“Within the circuits of a dark eloquence, Bin Ramke has found a way to locate a self within the bonds of history and in so doing has broken those bonds into a new 'conspiracy of dazzle.' If knowledge is form—and it is—here is a poetry that everywhere shows us what it knows and leads us into a stunned gratitude.”—Ann Lauterbach
“Wake works brilliantly as a whole—the book's title with its multiple meanings impregnates the poems and allows them to speak to one another—and the overriding emotional thrust is a nostalgia freed of sentimentality, a nostalgia for the dream, for the dead, and for the ephemeral traces of nature, remnants that touch our senses…Wake is epic in its measure of the ruined world, which is our world, whether we dare claim it or not.”—Rain Taxi
“Readers should be thankful that Ramke has shared his inner peregrinations; those sturdy enough to withstand the hard Sophoclean light of his examination of humankind and the world at large may be the wiser for it.”—Max Winter, Boston Review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
The Ruined World
Essay
A Theory of Fantasy
Chivalric
A Little Ovid Late in the Day
Livery of Seisin
Shostakovich and Kubatsky in Archangel
Mercy
Someone Whispers Below in the Garden
Sad Stories
Grass Fires
Small Noise the Weather Makes
Body Parts (1968)
& the War in France
Another Lean, Unwashed Artificer
A History of His Heart
Pretty Words, Parabolas
Enter Celia, with a Writing
A Great Noise the World Makes
A History of Tenderness
For I Have Already Been Once …
And the Light Never Waned in the Same Way Twice
How Light Is Spent
Toying
Toy Houses in the Landscape
Crisis
Famous Poems of the Past Explained
Testimony
Notes
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Iowa Press, 1999 eISBN: 978-1-58729-305-4 Paper: 978-0-87745-658-2
Throughout Bin Ramke's book of poems, certain elements recur insistently: birds and boyhood, betrayal and longings that careen between flesh and faith.
Ramke refuses to distinguish between scientific and poetic approaches to knowing the world. In Wake, the poet does not pretend to offer wisdom but instead offers words, and the words are given as much freedom as possible. The title itself resonates with all its presumptive meanings: an alternative to dreaming, a ceremony binding the living to the dead, and the pattern left briefly in water by boats—handwriting as turbulence in a fluid medium.
Elements of the world at large are woven into the language of these poems, resulting in a conversation among transcripts from the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer, passages from the notebooks of John James Audubon, a meditation on the Book of Daniel, whole epic sentences out of Milton, and the modest observations of the struggling poet himself.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Bin Ramke has published seven previous books of poems, including Massacre of the Innocents (Iowa, 1995), Wake (Iowa, 1999), and one of the first Kuhl House Poets books, Airs, Waters, Places (Iowa, 2001). The editor of the Denver Quarterly, he teaches creative writing at the University of Denver and at the Art Institute of Chicago.
REVIEWS
“Within the circuits of a dark eloquence, Bin Ramke has found a way to locate a self within the bonds of history and in so doing has broken those bonds into a new 'conspiracy of dazzle.' If knowledge is form—and it is—here is a poetry that everywhere shows us what it knows and leads us into a stunned gratitude.”—Ann Lauterbach
“Wake works brilliantly as a whole—the book's title with its multiple meanings impregnates the poems and allows them to speak to one another—and the overriding emotional thrust is a nostalgia freed of sentimentality, a nostalgia for the dream, for the dead, and for the ephemeral traces of nature, remnants that touch our senses…Wake is epic in its measure of the ruined world, which is our world, whether we dare claim it or not.”—Rain Taxi
“Readers should be thankful that Ramke has shared his inner peregrinations; those sturdy enough to withstand the hard Sophoclean light of his examination of humankind and the world at large may be the wiser for it.”—Max Winter, Boston Review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
The Ruined World
Essay
A Theory of Fantasy
Chivalric
A Little Ovid Late in the Day
Livery of Seisin
Shostakovich and Kubatsky in Archangel
Mercy
Someone Whispers Below in the Garden
Sad Stories
Grass Fires
Small Noise the Weather Makes
Body Parts (1968)
& the War in France
Another Lean, Unwashed Artificer
A History of His Heart
Pretty Words, Parabolas
Enter Celia, with a Writing
A Great Noise the World Makes
A History of Tenderness
For I Have Already Been Once …
And the Light Never Waned in the Same Way Twice
How Light Is Spent
Toying
Toy Houses in the Landscape
Crisis
Famous Poems of the Past Explained
Testimony
Notes
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE