by Janice
N. Harrington
New
Poets of America Series
Winner
of the 5th Annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize
Winner of the 2008 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Janice
N. Harrington's collection Even the Hollow My Body Made
Is Gone was selected from over 900 manuscripts by judge
Elizabeth Spires as winner of BOA's 5th annual A. Poulin, Jr.
Poetry Prize. The book was selected winner of the 2008 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. As Elizabeth Spires writes in her Foreword to
the collection, "Like a stringed instrument that continues to
vibrate after the musician has ceased playing, Harrington's
poems resonate. Without in any way simplifying or ignoring the
darker side of life-pain, loss, death, injustice--Harrington
is a celebratory poet who sees with the fresh, wondering eye
of a child, but knows with the mind and heart of an adult."
Henry
Ossawa Tanner's "The Banjo Lesson," 1893
How
does it feel to run the tip of one
finger
along the edge of a banjo wire?
Which
is heavier, a banjo
or
an old man's breath?
The
sound of banjo strings
plucked
by a colored boy is the sound
of
twanging, of tur-pen-tine, pine tar, plank,
of
pennies of rain spattered on scalded tin.
Boy
and man frailed by light and strokes
of
paint, surrounded by chair, table, kettle,
crock,
a cooling skillet, a pipe exhaling
smoke,
and mystery: beside an unseen
pane--a
black coat: journey, the small
griefs
we throw across our shoulders.
Between
daylight and firelight,
these
bright emberes, O trembling
strings!
Darkness is never satisfied.
Beside
the useful plates, pitcher, and bread,
on
the table's altar cloth, these questions:
Should
we buzzard lope and knee bone bend
in
a ring dance of stuttered steps, or strike
the
drumhead, strum, strum, strumming
strident
chords? Should we pluck the reeling
notes
or embrace and blow embers into flame?
Pull
a vein from your right ventricle,
stretch
it taut, slant one thumbnail and pluck it.
Listen--does
it sound anything like rain?
Copyright
© 2007 by BOA Editions
Available
editions:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-929918-89-8
Price: $15.50
Publishing Date: April 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New
Feature: Buy our books online in our new store [Here]
BOA Editions, Ltd. would like to thank the following generous Publishing Partners for their support of Even The Hollow My Body Made Is Gone:
Anonymous (5)
Alan & Nancy Cameros
Craig Challender
Gwen & Gary Conners
Susan DeWitt Davie
Peter & Sue Durant
Bev & Pete French
Jacquie & Andy Germanow
Judy & Dane Gordon
Kip & Deb Hale
Patti Hall & Joseph Shields
Tom Hansen
Robin & Peter Hursh
Archie & Pat Kutz
Nora A. Jones in memory of Max N. Rogers
Craig & Susan Larson
Catherine Lewis & Angela Bonazinga
Stanley D. McKenzie
Marianne & David Oliveiri
Richard Peek
Boo Poulin
Deborah Ronnen
Steven O. Russell & Phyllis Rifkin-Russell
Michael Starenko & Dale Davis
Joseph Turri
Ellen Wallack
Thomas R. Ward in memory of Jane Buell Ward
Michael Waters
Dan & Nan Westervelt
Mike & Pat Wilder
Glenn & Helen William
