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Title: The Art of the Lathe: Poems by B. H. Fairchild, Anthony Hecht ISBN: 1-882295-16-1 Publisher: Alice James Books Pub. Date: April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A brave and honest book
Comment: Fairchild has written a book that is elegantly blue-collar. It is a poetic memoir of the highest caliber. In these down-to-earth poems, readers are shown that fathers and sons share a heart even when they do not share a collar. BH Fairchild will never spend his life turning a lathe. It is his task to turn out poems like these in order to honor the life of his father and all of our blue-collar fathers who work(ed) hard to make our own intellectual lives and pursuits possible.
This work is a collection of finely-crafted poems that celebrate the American way of life.
Rating: 5
Summary: it's a phenomenal collection
Comment: This book was a National Book Award Finalist, and deservedly (This Time by Gerald Stern won that year, but I haven't read it yet, so I can't compare).
Fairchild was born in Houston, and grew up in West Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. His upbringing very much shows in his work. This is the poetry of the blue-collar working class. This is very much the poetry of the west and of Texas. Fairchild writes mostly longer narratives and dramatic monologues (most with longish lines). Some of the best poems of his are: "Beauty" the 10 page narrative of the working man, and this poem is phenomenal. It is one of the best contemporary poems written. And in fact, the only modern day narrative that is better is Dave Mason's "In the Country I Remember", though not by much. There is also one of the best baseball poems in recent years (or maybe the best baseball poem ever), "Body and Soul", a great narrative that runs a few pages and touches on the truth of the human soul of the working man. Also of great note is "Keats" (it'll surprise you) and "Cigarettes" a poem that finally gives us a reason to smoke. Or at least an understanding. The other poems in this collection are also great, those four are just the best.
There are two signs that clued me in that this was going to be a great book (other than the finalist of the Nat'l Book Award). The first were the blurbs. R.S. Gwynn, the modern day Pope, says "[Fairchild] measures a world inhabited by those for whom life has made its meaning plain by constant subtraction...both real and mataphorical, that figure so prominently in this collection." Dana Gioia says of this collection: "Fairchild boldly plundesr the territories of prose to expand the possibilities of contemporary verse...These fluent poems are amnivorously intelligent. The reader never knows what will come next; but, as deeply psychological in their probings as a novel, they alwasy cohere." Tim Steele, one of the greatest of the modern metricists, says "Fairchild brings sympathetic insight to the people...he has a gift for focusing on those moments when lives constrained by psychological or economic circumstances are touched by beauty and significance." And Wyatt Prunty calls the poems "remarkably textured, genrous, haunting" .
And the other sign of this books importance is Anthony Hecth's introduction. No more needs to be said.
Rating: 5
Summary: Prize work
Comment: Once in a while the prizes go to a book that truly deserves it. This is a wonderful collection. Fairchild's poems are mature, nuanced, strongly crafted, and moving. He's particularly good at mixing narrative with lyric, as in the stunning poem "Beauty." And see if you don't think that "Body and Soul" isn't the best baseball poem ever.
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Title: Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest: Poems by B. H. Fairchild ISBN: 0393050963 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Arrival of the Future by B. H. Fairchild ISBN: 1882295250 Publisher: Alice James Books Pub. Date: July, 2000 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: 2004 Poet's Market (Poet's Market, 2004) by Nancy Breen, Vanessa Lyman ISBN: 1582971870 Publisher: Writers Digest Books Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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Title: Suspicious River by Laura Kasischke ISBN: 0395860024 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 18 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: In the Next Galaxy by Ruth Stone ISBN: 1556591780 Publisher: Copper Canyon Press Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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