Things are Happening

by Joshua Beckman, Gerald Stern (Introduction)

Overview

The inaugural winner of the annual American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Award.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780966339505
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	09/01/1998
Series:	APR Honickman 1st Book Prize
Edition description:	1 ED
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of five books, including Shake and two collaborations with Matthew Rohrer: Nice Hat. Thanks. and Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. He is an editor at Wave Books and has translated numerous works of poetry and prose, including Poker By Tomaz Salamun, which was a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Award. He is also the recipient of numerous other awards, including a NYFA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Seattle and New York.

What People are Saying About This

Leslie Scalapino

"Joshua Beckman's line breaks: are the lines, sensations, account as if as if overlapping thrown fooward as by a speaker who becomes breathles in the extension [of the sentence] sometimes to minute, concentrated pltelets as extension by slight disparities."

Editorial Reviews

Winner of a first book prize, this volume has surprisingly few of the flaws one would expect in a debut collection. The book contains only six longish poems, meditations and narrations told simply, directly, and with a rich sense of humor. In an elegy for poet David Avidan, after noting the disinterest of the world "at the news of your death," as children laugh and life goes on, Beckman continues: "the trees became sad,/ not all of them of course,/ but a few in every country,/ and they decided to skip summer/ and drop their leaves right then." "Purple Heart Highway" is a road trip, an adventure, and a love poem to the poet's car: "My car not up to snuff,/ putting along, bad knocking/ when I accelerate." In the end, a breakdown--and hope: "Cars move by and in their presence/ their bright red physicality/ I believe them to be the greatest/ smoothest, most natural things ever./ There is no one to tell me this/ but everything's going to be all right." Recommended.--Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia

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