Rising and the Rain: Collected Poems

by John Straley

Overview

John Straley crafts here a collection of poems that pay homage to his home of the Pacific Northwest and southeastern Alaska. His narrative poetry is infused with sharp wit and delicate details, as he meditates on the natural world of the Pacific coastline and its rhythmic seasonal patterns, cycles of rain, and rich abundance of earth. Straley intertwines the personal and political to create elegies of refreshing honesty and universal scope, making The Rising and Rain a powerful work by one of the top emerging poets today.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781602230330
Publisher:	University of Alaska Press
Publication date:	10/15/2008
Series:	Alaska Writer Laureate
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

John Straley is a criminal defense investigator for Alaska’s Public Defender Agency and was named the Alaska Writer Laureate in 2006.

Table of Contents

-  tennakee springs: september 2001
- words overheard at elmer fudd's funeral
-  my sexual legacy
-  wile e. coyote considers the obvious
-  on the day they buried gus hall
-  the new year
-  for a boy who has to write a poem for school
-  not anymore
-  what i wouldn't give for this
-  dark green
-  the enthusiasts
-  respite
-  fire camp
-  every single day
-  what god, glenn gould, and the heron on my beach must have in common
-  rules of war
-  your first snow
-  poem for october
-  mid-winter miracle
-  in this dream about love
-  after simone weil
-  one sided
-  ain't that a man?
-  first kiss
-  ghost dance
-  baby on a girder
-  the erotic life of books
-  happy stories
-  pepe le pew's tristia
-  finding lou
-  my heart went boom
-  for bill, lost at sea
-  walking back
-  words to say while kissing
-  because you asked me what i was thinking on the day i took my son out of school to watch the elders bless a totem your brother so recently started
-  gibberish
-  eavesdropping
-  the rising and the rain
-  overheard in the public defender's waiting room
-  satisfied
-  my finest work
-  four haiku from the year my parents died
 
six epithalamions and a birth announcement
-  on this shore where love is not enough
-  the map and territory of love
-  the way through
-  when the lights come up
-  accidental blessings
-  before you were born this was everything i knew about you
- ephemera