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National Poetry Month: JACKET COPY FOR ‘A YELLOW PENCIL IN MIDAIR KEPT SKETCHING’ by Adam Atkinson
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Jacket Copy for ‘A Yellow Pencil in Midair Kept Sketching’
by Adam Atkinson
Things are either metaphors or not in these
poems. “Three ghosts pin / the tail on the
reader.” Ghost or literal ghost? Literate
ghosts know these poems by heart: I Must
Live Forever; The Editor is Delighted; Yes! Yes!
Yes!–all of the essentials. This poet holds a
gun to the reader’s face. (A bomb with a
shrinking fuse, either/or.) The poems fade
in and out of view, but the gun remains,
floating in space. Point is, it’s hard to look
away from a shrinking fuse. Forty years go
by, and the reader has a family and a vehicle,
sings tenor in the choir, gets comfortable.
Fade in: these poems, pulling their atoms
together for a brief burst of fission:
“BANG! / BOOM!”
This poem is from issue 40.1. You may purchase a copy here.