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Tony Tost’s exhilarating poetry debut defies conventional description. Like a fantastic film, a feverish delirium, or a dream state, these prose poems use an experimental lexicon of imagery that goes beyond anything typically poetic. Tost’s point of departure is the loss of the Other that makes the I: Agnes. And in a sort of coming-of-age soliloquy song, he meditates on a range of topics: fatherhood, childhood, identity, poetry. Together his poems express the unburdening of consciousness, a consciousness that contains the likes of Blake, Italo Calvino, Allen Grossman, and Frank Stanford, among others (including Tost himself). Surreal and surprising, Invisible Bride showcases the prose artistry of a new American talent.
Swans of Local Waters
Their color is not a product of the water’s
depth; their quiet is not the lake’s. These
are accidents floating in simple water,
taking in nature calmly, in little sips; actions
which, like literal swans and lakes, are
sometimes scattered. What the swans look
like: white, with feathers. It’s getting cold.
Someone has made a fire. A flame’s identity
depends upon what it burns — identity is
like a swan for it comes and goes as it pleases.
I don’t know how to talk about my father,
so I am going to describe the lake: it’s blue,
with swans. I can film it. There’s still a fire
by the lake. The swans are safe in the water.
It’s getting cold. Almost dark. I have a list
of things that get more definite at night.
1) The shape of fire.
2)
“Swans of Local Waters” published in Invisible Bride: Poems by Tony Tost. Copyright © 2004 by Tony Tost. All rights reserved.
Tony Tost’s poems have appeared in the literary magazines ence, No, Pleiades, Spinning Jenny, Quarter After Eight, Black Warrior Review, can we have our ball back? and others. Born in Missouri and raised in Washington, he lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
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