978-1-58838-077-7
1-58838-077-7
$18.00 hardcover
NewSouth Books |
There are few poets today
who have the sharp eye and fierce tongue of Andrew Glaze. His
formal mastery, intellectual honesty, and linguistic clarity are most
evident in Remembering Thunder. Dark and despairing at times, the
book triumphs in the end because Andrew Glaze comes "from a
believing crew." He has never really "learned to
want" but relies on humor, persistence, and the redemptive powers
of poetry to allow him (and us) to fire "wild bursts at forever,
singing." If you buy but a single poetry book this year, let
it be Remembering Thunder.
—Pablo Medina
I had a good time. Language always wonderfully sprightly, but without
any shallow trickiness—I enjoy Glaze's preference for life in this
dusty dimension. Thanks to him."
—Richard Wilbur
With grace, good-humour and disarming – if not disingenuous –
clarity the poems of Remembering Thunder demonstrate once again
that the consolations of memory are not what the heart or the brain
desires. Glaze is a wise poet who understands that, while it cannot
recreate the lost world of the past, a poem can create a vital present
out of the chaos of memory. His lively evocations, his friendly ghosts,
cheer us for as long as it takes us to admit that his easy-going
necromancy is a much more complicated and dangerous enterprise than at
first it seemed. The simple surfaces of his poems make us believe that,
like the poet, we can walk on water. When, finally, we come up for air,
we understand that Glaze has taken us beyond memory, past the questions
of then and now, innocence and experience, or even life and death, into
a kind of echoing ecstasy which, after all, is what great art seeks to
do. He does not answer his own questions or ours; he gives us the poems
and I am grateful for them.
—Thomas Rabbitt
In his poem "Horace," one of the best of this fine
collection, Andrew Glaze notes that Emily Dickinson "testif[ied] to
the glory in the soul." What better praise for a poet than to give
him back his praise for another? Readers of Remembering
Thunder will find that these poems also "testify to the glory in
the soul."
— Mark Jarman
What a treat! Andrew Glaze’s latest dazzling, funny, quixotic and
very wise poetry! As he once said, ‘My poems, you are damned ugly
children,’ but this new collection is a curtain raiser on Glaze’s
unique, dancing lines, and his tenacity, his ambition, even, to arrive
at the whole truth.
—Donald Lev, editor of Home Planet News
Glaze's boldest work to date, Remembering Thunder looks at
death—"the dubious footbridge to who knows where”— with a
combination of skepticism and disdain. His language is full of
surprises, as is his devil-may-care imagery. His original and unsettling
voice makes these poems a real triumph.
—Maxine Kumin
Andrew Glaze is a major poet, and Remembering Thunder is an
important book that lovers of contemporary American verse will want to
read again and again.
--Robert Ely, First Draft
A new book of poems by Andrew Glaze, such as his latest, Remembering
Thunder, is a literary occasion worth celebrating, as his poems,
always so refreshingly original, one after the other, are like no
others. Not for Glaze the convoluted wordiness or parochial
posings of the academics; for years Glaze has gone his own wonderful
way, personal but accessible, creating with richly imaginative and
quirky images a fanciful but oddly recognizable world that invites the
reader in for good.
—Martin Mitchell, editor-in-chief, Rattapallax
Andrew Glaze’s previous book, Someone Will Go On Owing: Selected
Poems, 1966-1992, won the inaugural SEBA Book of the Year Award for
poetry in 1998. He now brings us a collection of new work that deserves
attention and a wide audience. He is an unusual poet for these times,
thoroughly modern yet rooted in the tradition of American poetry.
Peter Schjeldahl in The New York Times calls Glaze’s poetry
"wonderful company. I would like to just quote and quote." And
critic William Doreski puzzles that perhaps Glaze’s work "demands
such honesty from the reader that despite [50] years of publishing some
of the most exciting poetry of our time, Glaze remains relatively
unknown."
Publisher’s Weekly has said of him, "Balance, born of conciliated
tension and contradiction, characterizes Glaze’s work…without
conceit or embarrassment, he purposefully inhabits the role of poet as
bard and minor prophet."
about the author
Andrew Glaze was born in Tennessee and raised in Birmingham.
Educated at Harvard and Stanford, Glaze later worked as a newspaper
reporter in Birmingham during the Civil Rights struggle. He
has written eleven plays, two novels, and nine books of
poems. His first collection of poetry, Damned Ugly
Children, was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. Glaze lives
in Miami with his wife, Adriana.
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