War Bird

by David Gewanter

Overview

From Three at 4:43

And here comes my friend, limping on

his heavy boot, the heel come off.  A cobbler's shop

appears, and I buy the black nails, the dwarf's hammer, glue and strapping.

I work hard on it, bending there

until he speaks and walks on.

But as he is dead, his voice and step

make no sound.

In his third book of poems, David Gewanter takes on wartime America, showing our personal costs and inextricable complicities. The constructs of our social lives, the conventions of our political values, the ambitions of our private fantasies—all these collide comically and tragically. Here, the far right marries the far left, and the sacred is undone by the profane. Gewanter's ironic vision pulls together details from science, history, philosophy, the disappearing dailies, and the emotional life of an engaged and singular mind into poems on the move with tense rhythms, rich correspondences, and daring hairpin turns. War Bird gives the lie to the shining moral complacencies of the homefront. Unsettling yet radiant, this collection is a book for troubled times, for what Whitman called, in “1861,” our “hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.”

 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226289786
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/01/2009
Series:	Phoenix Poets
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Gewanter is professor of English at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Sleep of Reason and In the Belly, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

 

 

The Old Parables

 

I. Day Book

 

In again Out again

Body Text

Hamlet of Merano: The Lotus Eaters

Break-Up Café

Baudelaire’s Day Book

Desaparecidos

The Giants’ Causeway

Book of the Blurbers

Three at 4:43

1972: The Battery

 

II. American Incognito

 

Jacopone Pietà:Justice

American Incognito

Pediment

Michelangelo: Three Poems in Black

Mistress Umlaut

Möbius

Surrey: Walled Garden

Against the Grain

Cook at Maui

 

III. War Bird

 

War Bird: A Journal

 

 

Notes

Editorial Reviews

"Gewanter's work is implicitly a respect for the past, all of ours, the grief is there, the truth not always pretty; it is solemnity belied by humor, always humor keeping us reading. . . . In this book the peaks of history are attacked from all angles, sometimes with dash, sometimes more vulnerably. Gewanter’s facets are eclectic and buoyant inventions. He concocts combinations that dare us to be happy so we will not be destroyed by his truth. This is when humor becomes craft. It lifts us up while slapping us down. David Gewanter is tortured by love for the world. His remorse for that same world summarizes his poems. He is Mick Jagger and Seamus Heaney in a style well achieved, original and true."

Monterrat Review - Grace Cavalieri

This disciplining, demanding writing itself is enough to recommend David Gewanter’s new collection, as is its no uncertain pursuit of a politics that takes no prisoners. It’s common enough that poetry will use its wisdom to advance an agenda, but War Bird far surpasses that limited goal. The hard edge of its menacing wit, the severe tension of its layered lyricism, the implied magnitude of its statement combine to effect a moral force. This is poetry in a language that matters.”

Stanley Plumly

"The poems are funny, vicious, and swirling. Many are politically motivated, their ironic language lobbying for connections between strata of meanings. How do politics and history and culture sound in the subjective, as something spoken by the poet who cares about the texture of language, the privileged placement of sound and sense, above a layer of "meaning?" Gewanter's history feels personal, a history he creates consciously in the present, as a preparation for the future."

Tikkun - Sean Enright

"In this book the peaks of history are attacked from all angles, sometimes with dash, sometimes more vulnerably. Gewanter's facets are eclectic and buoyant inventions. He concocts combinations that dare us to be happy so we will not be destroyed by his truth. This is when humor becomes craft. It lifts us up while slapping us down. David Gewanter is tortured by love for the world. His remorse for that same world summarizes his poems. He is Mick Jagger and Seamus Heaney in a style well achieved, original and true."-Grace Cavalieri, Monterrat Review

— Grace Cavalieri

Monterrat Review

"The poems are funny, vicious, and swirling. Many are politically motivated, their ironic language lobbying for connections between strata of meanings. How do politics and history and culture sound in the subjective, as something spoken by the poet who cares about the texture of language, the privileged placement of sound and sense, above a layer of "meaning?" Gewanter''s history feels personal, a history he creates consciously in the present, as a preparation for the future."-Sean Enright, Tikkun

— Sean Enright

Tikkun