Surfaces

By Michael Lesher

Michael Lesher's Surfaces is a celebration of what might be called the central paradox of poetry: that every attempt to plumb the depths of lived experience must begin, and end, in the impenetrable surface world of words printed on paper. Somehow, the shape of a collection of letters placed on a page, and the sounds they produce when pronounced, have to convey a sense of the most inward levels of experience. This would appear impossible, and the collection's introductory quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson -- "Give me truths;/for I am weary of the surfaces, /and die of inanition" -- only underscores the difficulty. Yet the goal of these poems is precisely to find those "truths" not by fleeing the surface of poetry -- line, rhythm, diction, and so on -- but by embracing it. And in doing so, of course, to reveal beauty as well

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 191320104X
• ISBN13: 9781913201043
• Release Date: April 2019
• Publisher: High Window
• Length: 86 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.8" x 8.3"