Shimmer

by Mark Irwin

Overview

A book of inquiry, Mark Irwin’s Shimmer queries how the worlds of poverty, terrorism, ecology, species extinction, mortality and race interface and affect one another through electronic reproduction and transmission. Not as spectacles but as events that often seem too familiar, many are featured on YouTube: a horse still alive, dragged to be slaughtered; a homeless mother with an infant; a terrorist disguising a bomb, a Vietnam veteran attempting to commit suicide, a mother, unable to speak, who communicates by drawing different colors.

Shimmer explores those places where metropolis and the natural world collide, where virtual technology attempts to convey the spirit. The incursion of electronic communication throughout society as a form of human language, has radically distorted and impacted notions of form and space in contemporary poetry, just as it has impacted the idea of what it means to be human.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781934695630
Publisher:	Anhinga Press
Publication date:	01/10/2020
Pages:	82
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mark Irwin was born in Faribault, Minnesota and has lived throughout the United States and abroad in France and Italy. He is the author of four previous collections of poetry: The Halo of Desire, Against the Meanwhile, Quick, Now, Always (BOA Editions), and White City (BOA Editions). His poetry and essays have appeared widely in many literary journals. Among his literary awards are National Endowment for the Arts and Ohio Art Council Fellowships, two Pushcart Prizes, the James Wright Poetry Award and a Fulbright Fellowship to Romania. He lives with his family in Denver.

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2020

In his latest, the multi-award-winning Irwin alights urgently on a world filled with sun-soaked marmalade and animals dragged terrified to slaughter. Certainly, there are wonders here: "just look/ from any jet and marvel at the astral makeup" and "Life is a red car/ with the top down." But Irwin also addresses weightier concerns: "What a great responsibility to think of things that no longer exist/ …of creatures no longer here/ …of people no longer here," and he's willing to take up the pen for them all so "the pear trees bud and flower in an instant." VERDICT Masterly, meditative work for all readers.

Library Journal