Description
- Kind: Chapbook
- Pages: 34
- Language: English
- ISBN: 978-1-933675-43-5
Praise
“Curley’s poetry calls on language’s magic, its errancy, the thing that “sounds itself outside itself,” as he writes, in his moving poem to Robert Duncan, one of his companionate shades or shadows. “Let the traces of our journey/be spliced into the under narrative,” he continues. Almost everything in these beautiful and savvy poems plays at elusiveness, the old imprint in the sand replaced by a knotted, spectral presence equal and co-adjunct to an absence, “a ghost to its origin.” Curley “sculpts shadows into substance,” lovingly braiding emotion, humor and pain with independence and a sure authority.” —Michael Heller
“The poetry of Jon Curley is intelligent, lean, and compelling. He is a young poet with worlds to explore and the words to do so.” —Samuel Menashe
Excerpt
Phantomology
for M.H.
Rest athwart
the longing
and the basement.
Cold here
in both places
where it rains
and where doubts develop.
Keep us impulsed
but not cocoon-clad.
At some point
you come clean
and tell us it is all right here,
even if its draughty.
I tried–no luck–and now
we gather gestures
in defaulting layers.
Who just moved past us?
They are the ones to save us.
About the Author
Poet and critic Jon Curley is a New Englander currently living in New Jersey. He was the creator and curator (along with writer/musician Chris Leo) of the legendary Haiti’s Hades Harlequins’ Hymns lyrics vs. poetry vernissageries in Brooklyn, New York. He currently teaches in the Humanities Department at New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Photo of the author by Hedi Allameh.
