Asbestos Brocade

By: A.E. Stringer

€12.00

Asbestos Brocade furthers this poet’s fascination with nature and the elements: how human action has frayed our bond with the world. Countering that grave loss are the forces of wonder to be found in art and song, in family, in empathy, in mortality itself. Naturally, human desire for the one true love (and the many) plays a key role in healing what is broken. Art Stringer’s p...

ISBN	978-1-910669-63-1
Pub Date	Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Cover Image	(and Design): Mary McDonnell
Page Count	78
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Asbestos Brocade furthers this poet’s fascination with nature and the elements: how human action has frayed our bond with the world. Countering that grave loss are the forces of wonder to be found in art and song, in family, in empathy, in mortality itself. Naturally, human desire for the one true love (and the many) plays a key role in healing what is broken.

Art Stringer’s poetry reveals a restive and observant mind attending always to the world around it. More than merely commenting on that world, Stringer’s work commits itself to the study of what we observe every day. Not content to describe, he dares to search for meaning, as if the world in all its multifarious manifestations were a text to be deciphered. The poems are like rocky crags. With a sudden shift of weight, the cleft that was your handhold turns to a jagged edge that cuts you open.

John Van Kirk

author of Song for Chance

Stringer is a poet of complexity and range… [he] beckons and invites us into his labyrinth.

Rory Brennan

Books Ireland

A.E. Stringer

A. E. Stringer is the author of three collections of poems, Channel Markers (Wesleyan University Press), Human Costume, and Late Breaking (both by Salmon Poetry). His work has appeared in such journals as The Nation, Antaeus, The Ohio Review, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest, and in Backcountry: Contemporary Writing in West Virginia. He also edited and introduced a new edition of Louise McNeill’s Paradox Hill (West Virginia University Press). For twenty-four years, he taught writing and literature at Marshall University.

At the Precipice Bar and Grill

Hawk in the far haze glanced

off an updraft, wingspan shearing

the afternoon. I could hardly stand

on the deck, keeping my distance,

whiskey medicinal and gusts

in my ears. Another happy hour

beside myself, saving an empty

place where once you . . . all that

twirl and glitter. I ordered

a double, watched a couple flirt

with the edge, then step back,

turn into arms entwining. Sky

burned every shadow blue.

I felt for your hand, illusion of cool

on my forehead. Leaning on the rail

over the tangle of river below,

I went for a loose end. Only

a fever, this reach into freefall.

Solstice Festivities

for Julia Thomas and John Teel

A wooden Santa stands on the mantel

beside a new candle of Buddha meditating,

face lit from within. O puffy gurus

of giving, we seek whatever peaceful

jollies you shall grant tonight, season

of darkness galore, icy star, tree of needles.

Gray sun down and a full moon rising

against the acid and hijinks of another

American nightmare year-end, we gather

ourselves in the name of all powers,

to sing along beyond irony, with Master

Satchmo: O what a wonderful world.

His wick a shade eccentric, I turn

the Buddha to the mirror where he can

see his own heart’s glow reflected. We’re

background now, contemplating unruly

reverence. If good will can save us, it’s a fair

miracle, and so much night left to burn.

Dangerous Bends

From Hook Light to George’s Head

we’ve rolled around the south like

bearings in a terrarium. Coastal cliffs

long gone black, then one day split

by ice-age sun into rocks that fell

through breaking waves to be ground,

later yet, to rounder shapes, the ever-

insoluble puzzle of shoreline.

Island of rain and retrospect, of ruin

and song, where to is ever also from,

paradox that won’t fit on a road sign.

Today it warns us about twisting along

Corkscrew Hill in the west of Ireland.

We’re less lost than usual, lightweight

breakable souvenirs in our heads, all

we can carry: peat smoke in wind,

rusted harrows, then over the next rise,

herring gulls quock in ripples of grass

by blue Atlantic amplitude. Restless

yes we are, but moved more by two

pasts: the great one preceding all,

ineradicable; and the one born

just now and fleeting in the side mirror.

An overgrown stone wall sweeps by,

blurred curtain closing, closing fast.

Map in no one’s hands, we double

back inland, cruise the narrow fold

of green and gray that is any Irish road.

Other Titles from A.E. Stringer

sale

Human Costume

€12.00 €6.00

Late Breaking

€12.00

Asbestos Brocade / A.E. Stringer