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    Changeable Thunder: Poems
    Changeable Thunder: Poems
    Changeable Thunder: Poems
    Ebook97 pages40 minutes

    Changeable Thunder: Poems

    By David Baker

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    About this ebook

    Changeable Thunder marks David Baker's emergence as a major contemporary poet. To his abiding sense of the Midwest—its politics, people, and landscapes—Baker adds a powerful historical dimension, with poems ranging from Puritan New England to the modern subway. Of particular note are poems on the works of other writers, as he reanimates Shelley's letters, Samuel Sewall's diaries, and Walt Whitman's novel. With brilliant technique, dazzling formal variety, and moving intimacy, Baker's poems explore personal illness, erotic and familial passion, artistic creation, and the constant work and changing weather of one man's life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Arkansas Press
    Release dateJul 1, 2001
    ISBN9781610750929
    Changeable Thunder: Poems
    Author

    David Baker

    David Baker has published widely in the field of Library and Information Studies, with 19 monographs and over 100 articles to his credit. He has spoken worldwide at numerous conferences and led workshops and seminars. His other key professional interest and expertise has been in the field of human resources, where he has also been active in major national projects. He has held senior positions at several institutions, including as Principal and Chief Executive of Plymouth Marjon University, and Emeritus Professor of Strategic Information Management. He has also been Deputy Chair of the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc). Until recently he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Universities of Northampton and South Wales. He is Chair of the Board of the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance. He is a leader in the field of library and information science.

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      Book preview

      Changeable Thunder - David Baker

      BOOKS BY DAVID BAKER

      POETRY

      Changeable Thunder (2001)

      The Truth about Small Towns (1998)

      After the Reunion (1994)

      Sweet Home, Saturday Night (1991)

      Haunts (1985)

      Laws of the Land (1981)

      CRITICISM

      Heresy and the Ideal: On Contemporary Poetry (2000)

      Meter in English: A Critical Engagement (1996)

      CHANGEABLE THUNDER

      POEMS BY

      DAVID BAKER

      THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS PRESS

      FAYETTEVILLE

      2001

      Copyright © 2001 by David Baker

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in Canada

      22    21    20    19    18        5    4

      Designed by Ellen Beeler

      The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Baker, David, 1954–

            Changeable thunder : poems / by David Baker.

                  p. cm.

            ISBN 1-55728-715-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

            I. Title.

            PS3552.A4116 C48 2001

            811'.54—dc21

      2001003103

      ISBN-13: 978-1-61075-092-9 (electronic)

      for Ann and Kate

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      These poems have appeared in the following magazines, to whose editors I extend my grateful acknowledgment: Arts & Letters, Two Clouds; The Atlantic Monthly, After Rain; Chelsea, Début de Siècle; The Colorado Review, That Moon; Crazyhorse, To Winter; Five Points, Mr. Whitman’s Book, Separation; The Georgia Review, Midwest: Ode, Simonides’ Stone; The Gettysburg Review, Cold Water, Dejection, Postmodernism; The Midwest Quarterly, Humble House; The Missouri Review, ‘Fade-Out’: A Lover’s Discourse; The North American Review, Pulp Fiction; The Paris Review, Forced Bloom; Ploughshares, Works and Days; Poetry, Ohio Fields after Rain; The Progressive, Midwest: Georgics; Raritan, Preparatory Meditation, The Puritan Way of Death, The Rainbow, Romanticism; The Southern Review, The City of God, Trees beside Water; The Southwest Review, Unconditional Election; The Yale Review, Benton’s Clouds.

      I am very grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, and Denison University for their generous support as I worked on this book.

      CONTENTS

      ONE

      Benton’s Clouds

      Pulp Fiction

      Forced Bloom

      Romanticism

      Trees beside Water

      Preparatory Meditation

      The Rainbow

      After Rain

      Cold Water

      TWO

      Postmodernism

      Début de Siècle

      Dejection

      Separation

      Fade-Out: A Lover’s Discourse

      Simonides’ Stone

      To Winter

      The City of God

      The Puritan Way of Death

      THREE

      Unconditional Election

      Midwest: Ode

      That Moon

      Midwest: Georgics

      Works and Days

      Mr. Whitman’s Book

      Humble House

      Ohio Fields after Rain

      Two Clouds

      Notes

      ONE

      In a single moment of time

      Many are the winds that blow this way and that.

      —Pindar

      BENTON’S CLOUDS

      The background is clouds and clouds above those

      the color of an exhaustion, whether

      of field hands stacking sheaves, or the coiling,

      columnar exhaust of a coal engine.

      It is eighteen seventy in nineteen

      twenty-seven in nineteen ninety-eight.

      The colors of his clouds express each new

      or brooding effluence felt elsewhere as

      progress, no matter which foreground story,

      no matter the gandy dancer contoured

      as corn field, no matter Persephone

      naked as herself, as a sinew of

      rock ledge or oak root yet pornographic

      under the modern elder leering down.

      The background is everywhere telling.

      In the present moment, in the real air,

      what we saw above the lake was an art—

      gulls and then no gulls, swirl of vacation

      debris twirling in funnels from the pier

      though the wind rushed in wilder off the surge,

      clouds, then not clouds but a green-gray progress

      of violences in the lowing air, waves

      like a bad blow under water.

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