David Lloyd

Biographical note:  David Lloyd grew up in the Welsh-American community of Utica, New York, USA. He directs the Creative Writing Program at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York and is the author of six books, including two poetry collections: The Everyday Apocalypse (2002) and The Gospel According to Frank (2009). In 2004 he published a fiction collection, Boys: Stories and a Novella. His poems have appeared in numerous journals in the US and Britain, including DoubleTake, Planet and Poetry Wales. In 2000, he received the Poetry Society of America’s Robert H. Winner Memorial Award, judged by W. D. Snodgrass.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844717606
ISBN:  9781844717606
Author:  David Lloyd
Title:  Warriors
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  DCF
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Apr-12
Extent:  80pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  5 mm
Weight:  120 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  In addressing public and private conflicts and transnational borders, David Lloyd’s new collection Warriors draws from myth, history, popular culture, family, the animal world, the environment while using an array of forms: the sestina, the parable, the lyric, the narrative, the poem sequence.

Main description:  The historic and domestic subjects in David Lloyd’s new collection are drawn from myth, history, popular culture, family, the animal world, and the environment. In addressing public and private conflicts and transnational borders, Warriors uses an array of forms: the sestina, the parable, the lyric, the narrative, the poem sequence.

Table of contents:
Part One: The Great Khan
I. The Second Greatest Joy
II. When …
III. What’s Next?
IV. In the Conquered Land of the Dead
V. Lifetimes Later
Part Two: Lords of the Jungle
The Everyday Apocalypse
What If?
Sitting Bull
Homage to Daniel Boone
Expedition
What’s Left?
Bomber Over Carreg Cennen
After the Crucifixion
Miracle
In the Courtyard of the High Priest
Perfection
Skin
Lord of the Jungle
Snowman
State of the Union
Perspectives
Various Restrictions
The Inner Nothing
A Definition of Insanity
Giving It All Away
Part Three: Father and Son
I. Homecoming
II. First Bruise
III. The Past
IV. Love (I)
V. Armament
VI. The Touch
VII. Love (II)
VIII. Telling
IX. The Fight
X. Once Upon a Time
XI. Somersaults
XII. Choices
XIII. Deity
XIV. Death
XV. Memory
Part Four: Bedtime Stories
Schizo
The First House I Knew
The Second House I Knew
Bedtime Stories
In the Wilderness
A Problem with Time
Part Five: Lessons in Geography
I. Childhood
II. Adolescence
III. Adulthood
IV. Old Age

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Excerpt from book:  

Perfection

One day the man who empties the trash
from my office wastepaper basket,
who limps and doesn’t speak clearly
or well or even often,
tells me he sleeps with fourteen cats,
so each night he’s touched in different places
by different cats stretching, kneading,
licking tails, yawning, settling themselves
with different access at different times
to his warmth, dreaming of him or maybe not –
who can know? – while around the bed,
he tells me, thirteen dogs take turns
patrolling perimeters, curling up on pillows
he’s tossed on the floor
or pacing by windows and doors,
checking locks, latches, keyholes,
sniffing the apartment air,
punctuating the night with growls or barks
as necessary, while outside,
he says, the squirrels never stop
perfecting their acrobatics
for the morning breakfast show
and the birds sharing those branches
and telephone wires in the dark
gather in twos and threes
to wake him, he says, with a chorus
they never get right,
though they try again each morning,
as faithful as his dogs, and one day –
he’s very sure of this –
they will sing perfectly in unison.

Unpublished endorsement:  David Lloyd in these poems asks us to measure our appetites, our time, and ourselves against the history and hubris of the great potentates, gods, warriors, and fathers. He sounds the limits of knowing and loving, and maps both the “North American forest of aboriginal danger” and the interior. His aim is at the heart. He is unafraid to ask the large questions of love and loyalty, mutability and awe. In these bold and essential poems he reveals the “secret markings” of creatures and returns – skillfully, subtly – to the stories of our forming.

Bruce Smith

Unpublished endorsement:  Politically urgent, David Lloyd’s poems consider how we deal with power, information, the absurdity of fame. This book is more than enjoyable, it is necessary.

Robert Minhinnick

Review quote:  Citation for David Lloyd’s co-winning entry to the Poetry Society of America’s year 2000 Robert H. Winner Memorial Award

David Lloyd’s “Sestinas for the Everyday Apocalypse” takes one of the most rigid forms – one that in most hands is clumsy and boring – turning it flexible, muscular and dramatically satisfying. Despite Lloyd’s range of variations, we have the sense of an established poetic “line” and of a working correspondence between syntax and music. More important, the best of these ten poems – above all, the final sestina – address the fearful dilemmas, our common losses and triumphs, with an unforced wisdom at once convincing and beautiful.

W. D. Snodgrass