2009 Massachusetts Book Awards Winner Representing nothing less than a tour-de-force of formal invention and emotional intensity, Oni Buchanan's Spring encompasses radically contrasting work. Ecstatic, visually intricate rhapsodies are juxtaposed with tight, sonnet-like poems, and wispy columns of verse brush up against large-scale epics and kinetic text. This collection's point of departure is the paradox of existence as an individual in a political and violent world. All of the formal innovations in this book have in common an urgent need for texture and polyphony, and the poems attempt to discover how to fulfill the individual human responsibility of surviving as a resiliently loving and hopeful living creature. An accompanying multimedia compact disc offers a full Flash-animated version of the printed kinetic work, "The Mandrake Vehicles."| Contents The Smallest Plant I. The Floor-Creatures Begin Song Cycle Amaryllis The Sleepers Vespers And on the Seventh Day (A) Version A Palimpsest of the Tasks Still-Life with Interior And of the Words Afterwards II. Envelopes of Sky Like a Near Fold Sublimation Attempt Solstice Where Are They Now, Unwilling Friends The Word Or Portals to Another World III. The Lonely Animal Dear Lonely Animal [Please share my Korean food with me] Dear Lonely Animal [Last night I wanted nachos again] Dear Lonely Animal [I miss you. The other animals] Dear Lonely Animal [Let?s have a collection competition] Dear Lonely Animal [Sometimes I could just] Dear Lonely Animal [I?m writing to you from the loneliest, most] IV. Text Message The Practice That?s Enough, Mr. Butterfly The Return A Hood Is Like an Ancient Chalice Maroon Canoe Today Mr. Rufo The Bells Spring V. The Mandrake Vehicles Note on the Mandrake Form [Mandrake vehicle 1] [not knowing enough to shriek when (not knowing when), they] (grid remainder after letter liftoff) (liquid layer 1, excerpt) [Towing no ghost, no wing, the] (grid remainder after letter liftoff) (liquid layer 2, excerpt) [Winnowing heart] [Mandrake vehicle 2] [while the outpour, while the spilling tenets of green, the green] (grid remainder after letter liftoff) (liquid layer 1, excerpt) [Weep, Lethe?s linnets, greet] (grid remainder after letter liftoff) (liquid layer 2, excerpt) [Thin paeans rust] [Mandrake vehicle 3] [for it promised sleep in delicate voice, for how must the] (grid remainder after letter liftoff) (liquid layer 1, excerpt) [Poised sin: deliver. Oust] (grid remainder after letter liftoff) (liquid layer 2, excerpt) [Silver U.S. bombs] | "In this adventurous mix of taut lyrics, dramatic monologues and free-ranging typographical experiments, Buchanan, who is also a pianist, has an ear for mellifluous runs and beautifully, at times humorously, evoked emotions."—Publishers Weekly
"Buchanan writes poems that are deeply sensitive, precisely imagined, fun and beautiful. She is taking poetry where it needs to go."—Time Out New York
"Spring oscillates with ease and grace between the spaces of beauty and decay in the modern world."—American Poet
|Oni Buchanan, a conservatory-trained concert pianist, is the author of the poetry collection What Animal.