
The Guns and Flags Project
Poems
Geoffrey G. O'Brien(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Published on 22. February 2002
Book
Hardback
85 pages
978-0-520-23132-0 (ISBN)
Description
Obsessed with work and dream, shot through with weather and color, Geoffrey G. O'Brien's spirited debut pursues the possibility of the lyric itself - whether the voice raised "with melodies/and thinking" can be rescued from the ongoing disaster of progress. In roving five-beat lines the poems pass again and again through scenes of liminality - sunset and dawn, falling asleep and waking up, border crossings - searching there for a potential ethics and politics of vision, a mutating, rhythmic "project" to oppose the inert spectacle of guns and flags. Like Ashbery stoked on sonics, O'Brien insists that the restless, unsatisfied motion of thought must hold the place for an ever-decaying freedom within the state. Yet it is not idea alone that flares "passionately in our lives," but the smell of rain, the behavior of clouds, repetitions of waves: these are the subjects of a meditative ecstasy that advances The Guns and Flags Project as an inheritor of the Stevensian tradition, charged with a sense that history's never-ending storm of restoration and ruin cannot be outmaneuvered but might be withstood, and even revised, by song.
More details
Series
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
227 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-23132-0 (9780520231320)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Geoffrey G. O'Brien's poetry has appeared in many journals, including American Letter & Commentary, The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Fence, The Iowa Review, and Volt.
Content
Acknowledgments
The Premiere of Reappearance
Second Shift
Absence of the Archbishop
Solubility
Isabel's First House
Thoughts of a Judge
Eloign
Early Description
The Sentry-Box
Parts of a House
Tale with a Cascading Moral
Excelsior
Observations on the Florida Question
Reverent Estimations
Palinode
Two Philosophers
Plants Waving in Different Directions
. . . .
In the Idle Style
The Truth in Italy
Standing Before Paintings
Constantly So Near
An Unusual Optimism
Stanzas from Oliveira's Third Dream
Man Called Aerodynamics
Of a Pressing Nature
A Soldier's Uniform
The Guestbook
The White Mare Sodality
Notes from the Trial of K.
Vinteuil's Little Phrase
Blue Rider School
The State's Only Child
The State's Only Child
Portrait of the X Family
Invention of Laughter
Second Summer
Omerta
Winter Rose
The Premiere of Reappearance
Second Shift
Absence of the Archbishop
Solubility
Isabel's First House
Thoughts of a Judge
Eloign
Early Description
The Sentry-Box
Parts of a House
Tale with a Cascading Moral
Excelsior
Observations on the Florida Question
Reverent Estimations
Palinode
Two Philosophers
Plants Waving in Different Directions
. . . .
In the Idle Style
The Truth in Italy
Standing Before Paintings
Constantly So Near
An Unusual Optimism
Stanzas from Oliveira's Third Dream
Man Called Aerodynamics
Of a Pressing Nature
A Soldier's Uniform
The Guestbook
The White Mare Sodality
Notes from the Trial of K.
Vinteuil's Little Phrase
Blue Rider School
The State's Only Child
The State's Only Child
Portrait of the X Family
Invention of Laughter
Second Summer
Omerta
Winter Rose