Flying Over Sonny Liston

By Gary Short

Book Overview

Winner of the 1996 Western States Book Award for poetry, Flying Over Sonny Liston explores with courage, compassion, and bone-deep wisdom the complicated and sometimes heartbreaking task of being human in the modern West. Whether he writes about the tortuous interior landscape of the family or the abused terrain of the Nevada desert, Gary Short is unfailingly honest, tender, and gifted with a vision for the all-revealing detail, the larger, wrenching truth. Although many of the poems are about death or express a deep and painful anger, the book is about survival. We often find in these poems a movement from the dark into a blazing light of realization that acts as a counter to sorrow, from comprehension to forgiveness, and an awareness that the daunting challenge of being human is won not in loud victories but through the delicate graces of mercy, trust, and hope.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874172853
• ISBN13: 9780874172850
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

When Only a Poet Can Explain

Gary Short is a fine poet who manages to visit places warily avoided by most. His poems vary in subject matter, but his best poems find expression of loss, of grief, of finding solace in the vast prairie that is his living space. At his brother's funeral Short reflects on his brother's dying: 'It is his last day./ I watch him sleep. A death-drowse./ His thin fingers touch/ his penis, belly, chest,/ & his face, as if/ he is trying to memorize/ himself.' In an Elegy For My Mother: 'The sunflower/ all day long follows/ the light/ (heaven's eye)/ & even after its star has set,/ continues to look out/ until loss/ is realized. Then/ it can only stare into the ground.' Words such as these fine poetry make and Gary Short has found a direct line to our moments of vulnerability for which we can only be grateful. This is fine poet. Grady Harp, April 05

A book to learn by

Having Gary Short's previous book, Theory of Twilight, I would have bought this book anyway, but I had no idea how much it would teach me about writing. This book is astounding. I love the open style of this book. While you can immediately tell that the subject matter is highly personal, each poem is accessable and seems to invite the reader to see Mr. Short's point of view. It is also important to note that this book is not just good poetry, it is well crafted poetry. Anyone wanting a truly marvelous experience with a book of poems should get this book.

Good work, definite must-read!

This book is really good and powerful and I would recommend it to any poetry fan.

An Astounding View of the Human Condition

Gary Short covers a lot of ground in each line, carefully choosing the perfect words. This book is the first I have ever marked with exclamation points, emphasizing lines I want to return to again and again, lines that haunt. His descriptions of nature go beyond mere settings, and delicately tie in with the mood or message behind the poems. Some verbs shock you with their originality and clarity. From a flame that is a "fluttering goldfish tail" to aspen leaves "spinning to coin in the wind's hand", readers are guaranteed to have their perceptions twisted into something astounding.