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Biographical note: Kaliis Smith was born in Boston, Massachusetts, but grew up all over America, including North Carolina, the District of Columbia, and Colorado. She is the oldest of six children. She graduated from Kenyon College in 2001 with a degree in Music, and no real plans for much of anything. Currently she lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with two cats, a few guitars, and an addiction to Chana Masala.
BIC Basic
EAN13: 9781876857486
ISBN-10: 187685748X
ISBN-13: 9781876857486
Author: Kaliis Smith
Title: Finger and Thumb
Series: Salt Modern Poets
Product class: BC
Language: eng
Audience: General/trade
BIC subject category: CTCH1
Publisher: Salt Publishing
Pub date: 28-Nov-04
Extent: 128pp
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
Weight: 192 gms
Supplier: Gardners Books
Supplier: Ingram Book Group
Supplier: Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability: IP
Price: GBP 9.99
Price: USD 15.95
Rights: World
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Short
description/annotation: Finger and Thumb is an exploration of language through that which is puzzling to one’s identity of self; nationality, landscape, the body itself, and relationships. Relying heavily upon musicality, rhythm, re-working of classic forms, the author manipulates the text in attempt to create a work that is as aural as it is literary.
Main description: Finger and Thumb strives to create rhythm on paper. It is a movement of language itself, for the sake of rhythm and numbers. Branching out from the phenomenon of “slam” poetry, the poems in Finger and Thumb attempt to keep linguistic integrity, while bringing a percussive element to the text. The subjects roam from landscape, to body image, to family life to, of course music, each playing with concepts of tonality in language, of innate music within the vocabulary.
There is a certain life given to the work. Everything is made human, as if making things human makes them more describable, more understandable, not only in the text but in their relationship to the author. It is a politically charged work that addresses issues of development, race, and gender in America. A large part of Finger and Thumb is about getting to pulse that lies in everything, the core of each item. Within that pulse is a beat which the language constantly addresses. A language that is moving and pulsing itself.
Ultimately, Finger and Thumb is about movement within the moment. The movement of language against itself, and the movement of one’s thoughts within one stream. It is an attempt to document the natural contradiction we are to stagnancy, and the rhythms that we all share.
Table of contents:
One Drop: Cream
Corpus Crater
Portrait of the letter U
In the name is power
Gabriel
The Ivory Tower
Ethyl has nothing on me
Profile
One Drop: Honey
One Drop: Chocolate
vacant lots
Ebon- nicfit
Stars cannot be made of rock
Cubicle
Ethnicosity
Ex-patriots
One Drop: Oreo
Ancestral Soup
corset
Curl
koibito
Alexis Gabrielle Zori Hay
Body: (lost and Found)
outdated
486s
Unsavory characters down the block
Williamsburg
Doldrums
expansions, contractions
Shaoshin Shaolin
One Drop: Coffee
Paces
Matthew
Dodge City Blues
Umbilical
Ellis-son
Schwanger
Capezio split soles
Star forecast
One Drop: Caramel
Daily trials of hard working women
Rebound
Anatomy of X
Ah, Amanouz
Prescription
Real Estate
Notice
Let’s not call it inspired
Trimesters
One Drop: Cinnamon
Aliyah
Akimbo
M. Butterfly
Jumble
Groove
Laden
Every Assassin needs a hobby
Rosaries
One Drop:Licorice
Greyhound Bus no. 179
My first love was Englyn Circh
Consignment
Oh, the Spirit of Conquest
Cenote
The Fine print rants
Collagen
ratio of water to tea
Sheet Hog
When Out Walking, The Adornment of One’s EgoCan Help You Avoid Being Mugged
Starting here
One Drop: Toast
Curfew
Why are they called complexes?
Fruitfly
Filth
Everything Must Go
Heirlooms View excerpt as PDF:  Click here to view a sample (56 KB)
Excerpt from book:
Collagen
I was marked
by my lips, I kept them moving
so no one would notice, balanced
4 syllable words between them
with my tongue, folded them
in on themselves to create
flatness, but I was nowhere near,
I had no concept of plains. they called
them pillows (buoyed by collagen
to create entertainment)
I had no vocabulary
to protect me
I stopped speaking.
Funny how we want to be
each other, the pure negation
of beauty, how my tan glistens
on your skin, but fades to
cream, how our hair stretches
toward shoulders, but scrambles
for the scalp. Strange now that
words should be validation
for my demeanor. and worse still
that I press them in self kiss
trying to make a line instead of
dialogue.
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