Research Catalog

Title

The first inhabitants of Arcadia : poems / by Christopher Bursk.

Author

Bursk, Christopher.

Publication

Fayetteville : University of Arkansas Press, 2006.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

124 pages; 22 cm.

Summary

"Herman Melville, Matthew Arnold, Sarah Orne Jewett, Dusty Rhodes, and Hoyt Wilhelm skinny-dip and pick up gondoliers and cut figure eights into the ice in Christopher Bursk's new collection. But the main cast of characters for these poems is the alphabet itself, "the first inhabitants of Arcadia, / now homesick, curious exiles from Eden." Here are a boy's first investigations into the nature of language as he studies the backs of baseball cards, and a young man's infatuation with the "F-word". The poems carry us from the picket line and a county jail and the canals of Venice all the way to a hotel room and a father's suicide note. They conclude with September 11 and a confrontation of the potential and painful limits of language. The titles sing their lettered songs: "An Ode to j," "M-m-m Good!" and "O in Trouble."" "Here are "reading lessons," the author's exploration of the curses and blessings of the word. It is about the fall from paradise and the gifts that fall makes possible. And over the whole book broods the great lexicographer, Samuel Johnson, that deeply troubled caretaker of the mother tongue. More than an ABC book, this collection asks questions at the very heart of how we understand the world and shows us the glory and silliness at the heart of human life."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

University of Arkansas Press poetry series

Uniform Title

University of Arkansas Press poetry series.

Contents

Learning to read -- Don't move -- More investigations into the nature of language -- The ars poetica of baseball cards -- Servants -- Multiple personality disorder -- F -- Ode to J -- Letter l as in reliable, indomitable, chivalrous -- M-m-m good! -- Hearing the word for the first time -- At an early age a boy discovers the pleasures and perils of double o -- Why a boy is drawn to lowercase p -- Vocabulary test -- [actual symbol not reproducible] -- What a boy knows and doesn't know -- Dictionary Johnson -- Working the stacks -- O in trouble -- Lycidas -- Scintillating? -- F this and F that -- Small r -- The CIA tries to dispose of still another mutilated body -- "Memorize 'dover beach' for Monday" -- A very short sonnet cycle -- Who hears talk now of boudoir? -- Skinny dipping -- Biographical fallacy -- The pathetic fallacy -- The burden of being the first letter in the alphabet -- Boycott lettuce! boycott grapes! -- The vanity of human wishes -- Trying to make sense of a single word -- True readings -- The importance of punctuation -- Not for love or money : not on your life -- The dropped stapler just misses the baby's head -- It's not the end of the world -- No extenuating circumstances -- Count to a thousand before you open the door -- Maybe -- Insufficient, incompetent, incapable -- Here -- My son's first real attempt to grow a beard -- "The business of a poet" -- What if you could be any letter? -- Say the magic word -- No weapons of mass destruction found -- ... y -- Zero : a found poem -- Babbadino -- Walking the beach, September 10, 2001 -- The sixth letter, the one with its arms outstretched -- What's worth keeping -- What's missing in the dictionary -- The visitor.

ISBN

1557288135 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

2005029967

OCLC

• OCM62089941
• SCSB-5235050

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries