The Listening Chamber: Poems

by William Aberg

Overview

Winner of the seventh annual Arkansas Poetry Award, William Aberg presents in The Listening Chamber a gallery of poetic forms, from short free-verse lyrics and crafted prose poems to original forms skillfully matched with their subjects. He writes comfortably of cats or derringers, the idylls of childhood, or of patients in mental hospitals. Throughout his poetry there runs a proletarian strain of dissatisfaction, an unrest coupled with dexterous wit and a remarkable sense of wonder. Convincingly, he populates these poems with farm workers, romantics, fugitives, lovers, beeches, elms, and constellations. With influences as wide ranging as William Stafford, Miklos Radnoti, and René Magritte, Aberg has fashioned a first collection in which every poem is a unique and haunting experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610752398
Publisher:	University of Arkansas Press
Publication date:	07/01/1997
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	76
File size:	609 KB

About the Author

Wile serving a prison sentence, William Aberg became involved with the Writer’s Workshop started by Arizona poet Richard Shelton. He won the 1983 Murial Rukeyser Award and has previously edited an anthology of prison poetry and two chapbooks, most notably The Lark and the Emperor.

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction by Richard Shelton Part One The Blade The Listening Chamber The Artist in Charcoal Parenthesis Nocturne A Penitent’s Dream of Venus Romantic Firewood Philosophies of the Dusk The Sleepers Delusions of Grandeur Apology to Congress after Visiting the Capitol Stairs with My Dog Beckett The Primacy of Odor My Real Mission Part Two Weddings Collington Creek The Remembering Vespertine The Old Romance Cymbeline Your Lap Note Left on the Bed Au Revoir Devotions Stepping Away from My Father En Passant Part Three Reductions Evening, ’74 Siempre The Rainlocker The Weight Barrio Anita, 1983 Evening Profile, Tucson Grey Figures Reunions Winter in Maryland Sarah Bicycle Messenger Meeting in South Tucson Exiles The Treehouse Natural Knowledge Notes

Editorial Reviews

"Few contemporary poets can manipulate light with the care and effectiveness of this one. These poems glow from within, although that light often comes from a tiny flicker or a drug-induced warmth. His surfaces come to life with texture and color from the play of light upon them, and the dreadful becomes even more dreadful in such a rich, luminous world." —Richard Shelton

“As fully as Baudelaire’s extraordinary book, and for some of the same good reasons, William Aberg’s collection, The Listening Chamber, might properly and honorably be titled Les Fleus du Mal. These poems are the product of intolerably agony, misfortune, and despair, miraculously redeemed by eloquent conversion into acts of art. This book is frightening, forbidding, and inspiring.”

—Anthony Hecht

From the Publisher