Starred Wire

by Ange Mlinko

"A fine-grained light like that of a nineteenth-century Danish landscape painting shimmers throughout these gorgeously tactile and tactful poems."--John Ashbery

"A heady heady brew--O'Hara conversation, Ashbery sophistication, Koch hilarity, Schuyler shapeliness, Guest adventures, Notley grain, Mayer utopia, Padgett whimsy, Oulipo oofs."--Bob Holman, National Poetry Series judge

Mlinko was hailed by Publishers Weekly as "one...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566891779
• ISBN13: 9781566891776
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 70 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A delightfully unpredictable experience

Starred Wire is a collection of poetry written to the beat of a different drummer. Taking liberties with rhymes, anagrams, puns, palindromes, free-verse, stream-of-consciousness, and other techniques, each work has a different natural rhythm, and all leave a vibrant imprint on the senses. Poems to provoke impetuous inspiration, Starred Wire is a delightfully unpredictable experience. Everything's Carousing: Even the Baroque gets lost in it. / Grass vests the dirt lest wind, twanging the skyscrapers // that merely sleeve the elevators, as we go sleeveless / except for the atmosphere, file it under "oceans." // Recalling the equations derived for ballistics- / aiming cannonballs is not like squaring lintels, // and skyscrapers are all lintel. / There isn't a straight line amidst all these that never meet; // I will write away for it. A sound that breaks / "the record and the tie with the most singles in a season." // Sparrows petulantly, like petals, adding subtracting / to crumb-strewn cafe tables, then boarding the ferries.