Nathaniel Tarn

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Biographical note:  Nathaniel Tarn poet, translator, critic, anthropologist, has led a distinguished literary and academic career studying and/or teaching at the Universities of Cambridge, Paris, Chicago, London, SUNY Buffalo, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Jilin (P.R.C.). Among some 35 books are The Beautiful Contradictions (Random House); Lyrics for the Bride of God (New Directions); Selected Poems: 1950-2000 (Wesleyan). He was founding editor of Cape Editions & Cape Goliard, London-New York, in the late Sixties. He lives near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844710553
ISBN-10:  1844710556
ISBN-13:  9781844710553
Author:  Nathaniel Tarn
Title:  Recollections of Being
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Sep-04
Extent:  124pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  7 mm
Weight:  186 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  This new book by Nathaniel Tarn contains two series of “domestic poems”; a set of poems about New Mexico, and a set of lyrical poems on contemporary issues: philosophical, environmental and political. They range from simple to complex; use varying meters and page lay-outs from closed to open – but the voice, developed over 50 years is always uniquely recognizable.

Table of contents:
I HOME ONE
Home One: One
Home One: Two
Home One: Three
Home One: Four
Home One: Five
Home One: Six
Home One: Seven
II PLACE: MAINLY NEW MEXICO
Caja del Río, New Mexico
Ventanas de Oro / Windows of Gold
White-out, Pojoaque River
El Ultimo / The Last Man
Vuelo Guatemala-Managua, Enero 1988 / G-M Flight, 01.88
El Padre de un Sólo Hijo / The Father of an Only Son
Old Man Weeping
Cibola, or the Cities of Gold
Hawk’s Place, Lobo Canyon, New Mexico
Mountain Bluebird, Colorado
Coming Down California
Kluane, the Yukon000
Sense of Achievement, Bluff, Utah
Sun’s Clouds
Waterhole, Breasts, Root
III RECOLLECTIONS OF BEING
Shell
Gravitational Waves
Dogs Dreaming
The Courtship
Clothes
Recollections of Being
Siempre Mas Invisible (One) / More & More Invisible (One)
Angel, with Sword
From: Muertos / the Dead
Assia
Father
Holocaust
Okigbo
No Icarus
Body in Glory
Azucar Amarga / Bitter Sugar
Ancestors
For Gene Frumkin: His Old Man Swimmer
Burial Plot
‘Tention ! Her Cadences
For Mister Irby, ‘Merican Master, upon his call steps: word
Impromptu (Become Air)
On Finishing Mariani’s Outrageously Long Life of W.C.W.
IV HOME TWO (DOMESTIC POEMS)
War Poems, Yet Again
1] A Marsyas Effect
2] The Fire Season
3] The Asphyxiation
The Book of Nudes
Home Two (Domestic Poems)
1] For a Living Mother
2] Windows of Moment
3] Signification Ergo Meaning
4] The Trip
5] At Lammermoor
6] Wozzek
7] Recall
8] The Why of It
9] Religion One O One
10] The Alternative
11] To be a Poet
12] “Gold” and “Blood”

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Excerpt from book:  

White–out, Pojoaque River

for Keith Wilson

Eye–socket muscles clench around snow–glare
like two fists. He sees winter only in this world:
everywhere else is summer. Dogs tame
to gentleness in the yards he passes; only a horse,
taciturn all year, chooses to neigh now.
His Samoyed, white against white, off to a war,
scats up black pads like signals. Explosion
of magpies—sky trailing from low tails,
ink and frost featherworks. In these distances,
both east and west, the mountain tables sit
powdered with snow as if the gods had flown
to scatter glacial pollen on their thrones.
He walks a colorless music, ivory and black
coding the universe alone (where, finally,
slight spider death had crawled on poison,
now sorrowed for, and shrunk to her last web).
At the impassable water, where the walk ends,
he hears potential company. No: now it’s river
plays her bass counterpoint against a leaf
held to its branch. Treble is higher up, against
a stone. At last, the leaf dislodged moves on
downstream. Sound stops—breaking a silence.

Review quote:  In book after book, Nathaniel Tarn has traced the feelings, thoughts and rituals that establish what and where we think we are. As a trained anthropologist, Tarn has a sophisticated understanding of ritual structures that shape communities. As a poet his interior testimonies argue for the irreducible authority of moods that resist all collation.

Joseph Donahue
First Intensity

Review quote:  Tarn’s contribution to contemporary poetry is of particular importance since it is so informed by his studies and fieldwork in anthropology. This links him very closely with the ethnopoetics of Jerome Rothenberg; the multicultural scope of Olson & Paz; the historical breadth of Pound, Eliot & Blaser; the scientifc interests of Zukofsky, McDiarmid and Rukeyser; the visionary intensity of [a] Maria Sabina. That all this should be embodied in the work of a single individual is quite extraordinary.

John Olson
American Book Review