1999 AWP Winner Edward Kleinschmidt Mayes carouses-playfully, deliciously-through the Italian countryside with his latest collection of poems. Like Hesiod's Works and Days, Mayes's collection explores the art of living and the transformations of one's life while working the land as a farmer. In his hand, the estatic and elegiac meet, shifting from a wide angle lens to the immediacy of the kitchen table, from Newton's revelations to the death of his parents. Written as an abecedarius, each poem's title begins with a different letter of the Italian alphabet, from Ago (needle) to Zappa (hoe). Often beginning a poem on the word that ended the last, he strings his readers along on denotation and double meaning-slight detours that take us from here to there, from Ovid shouting at his dog to our eternal quarrel with time. We follow this poet and his words, delighting in the movement, continually transported by sudden evocations of emotion that hit close to the heart. Mayes, known for his complex play with linguistic roots and for hard-driving tensile forms, extends his reach into the Italian language. As he farms his little plot of Tuscan soil, he introduces Italian phrases with a sense of wonder and pleasure, reminding us of our attraction for the word-imagination made flesh. He comes to realize that his "fields are poetry and olives" and his furrows and lines are seeded with Dante, and Virgil, Robert Johnson and Jussi Bjorling.

Works and Days (Pitt Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

Kleinschmidt, Edward

Mayes, Edward Kleinschmidt

Kleinschmidt, Mayes

Poetry

Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

Poetry. SPEED OF LIFE is a collection with a socio-political voice, including To Remain, about which Denise Levertov said the poem drives its terrible knowledge deep into our minds and hearts with hammer blows of factual repetition. The transcendence of its concluding metaphor stands firm on that unshakable foundation. And Eavan Boland comments This is a book that never swerves from its purposes and never allows the reader to. These poems are at the harsh center of things - in the urban sprawl, in the crucible of action, on the scene of the crime. The marvel is that the poet never forgets the obligations and enchantments of language, while always remembering its ethics. These are strong, memorable and also compelling poems. Edward Kleinschmidt Mayes's is the author of MAGNETISM and FIRST LANGUAGE (Juniper Prize). His poetry manuscript, WORKS AND DAYS, won the 1998 Associated Writing Programs Award and will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October.

Speed of Life

Apogee Press

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Books by Mayes, Edward Kleinschmidt