Peter Jaeger

Biographical note:  Peter Jaeger was born in Montreal, Canada. He has taught writing and theory at Dartington College of Arts, The University of Toronto, and Royal Holloway, University of London. He currently teaches Creative Writing at Roehampton University. His previous publications include Power Lawn (1999), ABC of Reading TRG (1999), and Eckhart Cars (Salt Publishing, 2004).

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844713240
ISBN:  9781844713240
Author:  Peter Jaeger
Title:  Prop
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Jul-07
Extent:  80pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  13 mm
Weight:  120 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  Peter Jaeger’s beautiful new work was written while travelling in Japan, India, Canada, Italy and England, but these intense lyrics are more than “travel poems”, they explore body awareness and consciousness within language itself — an interplay that becomes more evident through Jaeger’s unfamiliar surroundings and his exploration of meditation and yoga.

These poems express the temporary, impermanent character of perception by re-negotiating the traditional, voice-based lyric, making use of collage as well as dramatic shifts in syntax and narrative. Prop is a book written in motion, and its quick changes in tone and imagery present the dynamism and impermanence of the world.

Table of contents:
Prop

Excerpt from book:  

lakes submerge us
in our strength of cool
soft ribboned hues
the brightest outlines
closer to the lakes
hulled by silt &
grass banks, rust
pumping pine
lengthens a granite
alignment
scattered on charity
so cool the lake
expanding limbs
your broadened foot
& toes extend, always
to an upper clear
a brighter line
from fathoms

Unpublished endorsement :  In this delicate and evolving series of poems, the art of contemplation follows a disciplined trajectory, seeking to reconnect itself, through physical postures and language variations, to the many forms taken by the breathing matter of the world. Elusively, Prop traces a spiritual journey. Poetic practice pursues the lines opened by such an apprenticeship, and love appears.

Caroline Bergvall

Unpublished endorsement :  If the aim of writing is to make the world anew, then Peter Jaeger's beautiful new poems do. Me (whatever I am): I lept on / off my zabuton with increasing glee.

Tim Atkins

Unpublished endorsement :  Graceful and sinewy, this is writing clear as a bell with a rhythmic virtuosity to match.

Jeff Hilson

Unpublished endorsement :  The advantage of Peter Jaeger’s Prop is the incisive poetic line. If the attentions of a middle voice can be generated by the syllable then these poems are magnetic by how the voice deflects syntax in a finely tuned balance of narrative and rhythm. I think Jaeger has articulated a new kind of lyric, one that privileges the fact of the word as movement, the shaper, the “middle-/ way…/ curving means from thought.” The poems are precise in how they cut the line in a rush of syllabic particularity, insistent, just over the shoulder, and very close to your ear.

Fred Wah