Living Room

“The narrating voice in Living Room is insistent but quiet, though it sometimes achieves loudness without any apparent effort. At other times it seems to continue in the -reader’s mind even after stopping for the day. It is an important new presence, faintly disturbing and endlessly attractive.”—John Ashbery

Readers may be voyeurs, but the subtler gifts are not for the fast glancers. Take a good slow second look at Geoff Bouvier’s Living Room . . . bravura performances, both accessible and elegant, both immediate and subtle, both hilarious and serious. . . . With virtuoso reversals, switches of vantage, changes of scale, inside-outings, they accomplish metaphysical, not only physical, effects.—from the introduction by Heather McHugh

Each of Geoff Bouvier’s prose poems brims with industry and restless attention, and the dramas they contain are manifold. Here a solitary mind and there a whole social sphere are cross-sectioned for observation at moments rife with emotional collisions—awesome tediums, mad reliefs. In style and substance, Living Room enacts the urgency one feels to stretch out against cramped quarters. Introduced by Heather McHugh.

From Savings Plan

To save things, collect them in an unremarkable place—behind a row of history books, in the corner of the garage—where you wouldn’t usually look. Then forget about these things completely.
When you remember what you’re saving—a photograph of an ex, the fattening candy bars—but forget where you’re saving it, you may worry, even curse yourself. But remember how this is your plan, and how the plan is succeeding.
The savings are protected, hidden away, even if you can’t find them until many days after a rainy day.

Geoff Bouvier holds degrees from the University of Connecticut and from Bard College. He lives in San Diego, where he waits tables at Tapenade Restaurant and publishes journalistic prose with the San Diego Reader.

1101160049
Living Room

“The narrating voice in Living Room is insistent but quiet, though it sometimes achieves loudness without any apparent effort. At other times it seems to continue in the -reader’s mind even after stopping for the day. It is an important new presence, faintly disturbing and endlessly attractive.”—John Ashbery

Readers may be voyeurs, but the subtler gifts are not for the fast glancers. Take a good slow second look at Geoff Bouvier’s Living Room . . . bravura performances, both accessible and elegant, both immediate and subtle, both hilarious and serious. . . . With virtuoso reversals, switches of vantage, changes of scale, inside-outings, they accomplish metaphysical, not only physical, effects.—from the introduction by Heather McHugh

Each of Geoff Bouvier’s prose poems brims with industry and restless attention, and the dramas they contain are manifold. Here a solitary mind and there a whole social sphere are cross-sectioned for observation at moments rife with emotional collisions—awesome tediums, mad reliefs. In style and substance, Living Room enacts the urgency one feels to stretch out against cramped quarters. Introduced by Heather McHugh.

From Savings Plan

To save things, collect them in an unremarkable place—behind a row of history books, in the corner of the garage—where you wouldn’t usually look. Then forget about these things completely.
When you remember what you’re saving—a photograph of an ex, the fattening candy bars—but forget where you’re saving it, you may worry, even curse yourself. But remember how this is your plan, and how the plan is succeeding.
The savings are protected, hidden away, even if you can’t find them until many days after a rainy day.

Geoff Bouvier holds degrees from the University of Connecticut and from Bard College. He lives in San Diego, where he waits tables at Tapenade Restaurant and publishes journalistic prose with the San Diego Reader.

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Living Room

Living Room

Living Room

Living Room

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Overview

“The narrating voice in Living Room is insistent but quiet, though it sometimes achieves loudness without any apparent effort. At other times it seems to continue in the -reader’s mind even after stopping for the day. It is an important new presence, faintly disturbing and endlessly attractive.”—John Ashbery

Readers may be voyeurs, but the subtler gifts are not for the fast glancers. Take a good slow second look at Geoff Bouvier’s Living Room . . . bravura performances, both accessible and elegant, both immediate and subtle, both hilarious and serious. . . . With virtuoso reversals, switches of vantage, changes of scale, inside-outings, they accomplish metaphysical, not only physical, effects.—from the introduction by Heather McHugh

Each of Geoff Bouvier’s prose poems brims with industry and restless attention, and the dramas they contain are manifold. Here a solitary mind and there a whole social sphere are cross-sectioned for observation at moments rife with emotional collisions—awesome tediums, mad reliefs. In style and substance, Living Room enacts the urgency one feels to stretch out against cramped quarters. Introduced by Heather McHugh.

From Savings Plan

To save things, collect them in an unremarkable place—behind a row of history books, in the corner of the garage—where you wouldn’t usually look. Then forget about these things completely.
When you remember what you’re saving—a photograph of an ex, the fattening candy bars—but forget where you’re saving it, you may worry, even curse yourself. But remember how this is your plan, and how the plan is succeeding.
The savings are protected, hidden away, even if you can’t find them until many days after a rainy day.

Geoff Bouvier holds degrees from the University of Connecticut and from Bard College. He lives in San Diego, where he waits tables at Tapenade Restaurant and publishes journalistic prose with the San Diego Reader.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780971898189
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Publication date: 09/01/2005
Pages: 96
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Geoff Bouvier holds degrees from the University of Connecticut and from Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. His chapbbok, Everybody Had a Hat, won the White Eagle Coffee Store Press Poetry Contest for 2000. He lives in San Diego, where he waits tables at Tapenade Restaurant, and publishes journalistic prose with The San Diego Reader. Heather McHugh is the author of six books of poetry, and her Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 was named a "Notable Book of the Year" by the New York Times. She teaches as a core faculty member in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and as Milliman Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Table of Contents

Introductionxiii
1
Living Arrangement3
Secrets of Defense4
How to Become a Member5
A Happy Hour6
The House in Order7
As It Was Going to Be8
A Study of the Common Thing9
Keep Writing10
Like the Only Living Thing11
To Speak12
2
Distant Relations15
Builder of a Life16
The Late Stages of a Housewife17
Savings Plan18
Trying Fire19
New Day Heyday20
A Situation21
Second Going22
3
Myth Gave Birth to Philosophy25
After Measure26
Through the Mind27
Sestina28
Metaphysical Ground29
The Field Clear30
Reciprocity Effects31
Not Pathetic Enough Weather We're Having32
I Love You! Archaeological Excavation Reveals33
Somebody Stop LaSalle34
4
Truth is the Person Who is There37
Everybody Had a Hat38
Fortunate Islands39
What is a Subject to Do?40
The Ethics of Tragedy41
Altogether Now42
Orpheus Out of Tune43
Revisionary Traffic44
The Smith Family Trip45
Personal Trouble46
5
Reinterpreting the Signs49
Organized Philosophy50
The Town that Believed Wolf51
No, No, Never Nothing52
Insert Object Here53
Homeless54
The Altruist55
The Opening57
6
A Bee's Advice61
Mission62
The Last Viewpoint63
Civilization University64
The Addresses of the Vitalists65
It's All Right Here66
All Roads Lead67
If Only They Followed the Parables68
Words Fall Apart69
Fore72
Acknowledgments75
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