| Description |
viii, 96 p. ; 24 cm. |
| Contents |
A Downward Look -- Big Mirror Outdoors -- Nine Lives -- Morning Exercise -- Alabaster -- Snow Jobs -- Home Fires -- The Ring Cycle -- The Ponchielli Complex -- To the Reader -- Volcanic Holiday -- Rescue -- The Instilling -- Novelettes -- My Father's Irish Setters -- The Great Emigration -- More or Less -- On the Block -- Scrapping the Computer -- A Look Askance -- Press Release -- Vol. XLIV, No. 4 -- Tony: Ending the Life -- body -- Pledge -- Cosmo -- Radio -- Family Week at Oracle Ranch -- 164 East 72nd Street -- Quatrains for Pegasus -- The Pyroxenes -- Pearl -- Overdue Pilgrimage to Nova Scotia -- Alessio and the Zinnias -- Self Portrait in Tyvek (TM) Windbreaker -- An Upward Look. |
| Summary |
In this, his first new book of poems in seven years, Merrill is at the top of his form. His unrivalled poetic use of the private life is brilliantly evident. The stuff of autobiography is transfigured becoming a medium for the profoundest truth, couched in a language that draws on both rueful wit and elegant slang. From "Nine Lives," an Athenian fable, through "Volcanic Holiday," with its euphoric helicopter ride, to "Family Week at Oracle Ranch," set in a New Age rehab center, his vivid glimpses of the real world widen into surprising and meditative visions that touch us all. |
| Subject |
Poetry.
|
|
Poetry. (OCoLC)fst01067691
|
| Genre/Form |
Poems.
|
|
Uncorrected proofs (Printing) -- United States -- 20th century.
|
| Other Form: |
Online version: Merrill, James Ingram. Scattering of salts. New York : A.A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1995 (OCoLC)623144335 |
| ISBN |
0679441581 |
|
9780679441588 |
|
