Starred Wire

By Ange Mlinko

"A fine-grained light like that of a nineteenth-century Danish landscape painting shimmers throughout these gorgeously tactile and tactful poems."--John Ashbery

"A heady heady brew--O'Hara conversation, Ashbery sophistication, Koch hilarity, Schuyler shapeliness, Guest adventures, Notley grain, Mayer utopia, Padgett whimsy, Oulipo oofs."--Bob Holman, National Poetry Series judge

Mlinko was hailed by Publishers Weekly as "one of the most exciting American poets under 40." Her Starred Wire reaches across continents of language where, as in Borges, dream logic dictates an interactive, delirious exploration of art and childhood, place and possibility.

Author of Matin es, Ange Mlinko lives in Brooklyn with her husband and young son.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566891779
• ISBN13: 9781566891776
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 70 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A delightfully unpredictable experience

Starred Wire is a collection of poetry written to the beat of a different drummer. Taking liberties with rhymes, anagrams, puns, palindromes, free-verse, stream-of-consciousness, and other techniques, each work has a different natural rhythm, and all leave a vibrant imprint on the senses. Poems to provoke impetuous inspiration, Starred Wire is a delightfully unpredictable experience. Everything's Carousing: Even the Baroque gets lost in it. / Grass vests the dirt lest wind, twanging the skyscrapers // that merely sleeve the elevators, as we go sleeveless / except for the atmosphere, file it under "oceans." // Recalling the equations derived for ballistics- / aiming cannonballs is not like squaring lintels, // and skyscrapers are all lintel. / There isn't a straight line amidst all these that never meet; // I will write away for it. A sound that breaks / "the record and the tie with the most singles in a season." // Sparrows petulantly, like petals, adding subtracting / to crumb-strewn cafe tables, then boarding the ferries.