PARAPH OF BONE & OTHER KINDS OF BLUE
Ed Pavlic, Edward M. Pavlic, . . American Poetry Review, $23 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-9663395-7-4
This page will appear periodically in Poetry Forecasts, rounding up forthcoming first books of note. Since first books often attract younger readers, displaying the books together may catch potential buyers mid-browse.
Selected by Adrienne Rich for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, Pavlic's debut offers in return the musical cadences and lulls of experience: a lover's touch "gone to silence at the bottom/ of the pool. Rhythms, strings of the nidi/ travel thru bone// & in flesh waves without a goose/ ripple in my skin." Pavlic, who teaches in the English Department at Union College, spins endless synaesthesic trills, a seeming poetic signature (a "paraph" is a script flourish): "orange glow from inside the log, flakes waft like trout gills/ in a blue stream of smoke & I can't tell an ash limb/ from wood that breathes."
Reviewed on: 09/24/2001
Genre: Nonfiction
