Unsung : new and selected poems
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Bibliographic Information
Unsung : new and selected poems
Salt, 2001
2nd ed
- : pbk
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Description and Table of Contents
Description
"Sculpture is a part of the space around it." This statement by Katarzyna Kobro reflects Mengham's sense of how he wants the poetic text to relate to the languages that surround it. He has a set of ongoing preoccupations which are catalyzed by pronounced occasions, private and public. Ideally each text would be both univocal and multivocal, expressive and typical; since Mengham relies on a lot on circumstance, there is a great deal of personal input into the poems, but this is not meant to contribute primarily to a representation of the self, more towards a presentation of work for the reader to do. What kind of work? Certain kinds of semantic and syntactical derangement which Mengham hopes has a signature without constituting mere routines. He tries to catch the material in a state that remembers what it was like just prior to organization. And then in the process of composition there is an attempt to control this prehistoric material with particular attention to overall movement, phrasing, consonance and figure (which is to say, idea-rhymes). The distance between starting out and finishing is most obvious in the prose poems where you can see the agenda, perhaps even a theme or set of themes, that the text essays, as well as the curve it enters as a rhythm and an acoustic repertoire and conceptual and visual variations take over. It is less obvious but actually more extreme in the other poems.
Table of Contents
Local History
From `12 Minutes in a Firing Squad'
From `Dear Balzac & all the little Balzacs'
A Luminous Band or Track
Beds & Scrapings
The Big Wind
Polyalbum
From Polyalbum (uncollected)
Glossy Matter
Poem
Glow-Worms
Year Zero
Marsyas
Stolen Fires
Unsung
Neutrinos
Nomenclature
Dogs on Sticks
Down in the Mouth
Kobro
31/12/92
No Resolve
The Dog Star
Take a Bite
The Boeotarchs Shall Hear of This
From an Alley
The Snake on the Road by the Canning Bridge
Wish-Bones
This Is A Warning Letter
Prolegomena to the Echo
Names in the Bark
Prepare to Meet Your Date
To the Soviet Embalmers
7/8/97
Two Continents as a Medium for Poetry
Smitten
The Stoa
Another Name for the Cassiterides
Allegory of Good Government
I Couldn't Eat a Whole One
Nostratic Lament
Allegory of Bad Government
Friend on the Rocks of the Shore of the Night
Marriage to the Sea
Concession to Perpetuity No. 166
by "Nielsen BookData"
