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Clerk's Tale : Poems by Spencer Reece (2004, Trade Paperback)

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About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherHarperCollins

ISBN-100618422544

ISBN-139780618422548

eBay Product ID (ePID)102903145

Product Key Features

Book TitleClerk's Tale : Poems

Number of Pages80 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2004

TopicCaribbean & Latin American, American / Asian American, General, American / General

GenrePoetry

AuthorSpencer Reece

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.2 in

Item Weight3.7 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2003-067577

Dewey Edition22

ReviewsSupple, atmospheric, and lucent, Reece's entrancing lyrics evoke the diametrically opposed yet equally affecting landscapes of Minnesota and Florida and consider the axis between solitude and connection, peace and pain, philosophy and madness. Reece's poems are at once splendidly fresh and deeply rooted in poetry's rich loam as he offers a witty yet moving variation on Chaucer's The Clerk's Tale and echoes the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, and James Merrill. No academic, Reece is a longtime Brooks Brothers employee, and, accordingly, the title poem, originally published in the New Yorker, portrays two men, including an aging homosexual, who clerk in an upscale men's clothier in the Mall of America, an edifice Reece compares to a Gothic cathedral. Indeed, religious images surface often as the poet summons up childhood memories and evokes resonant vignettes, still lives, and today's cluttered versions of pastorals, subtly tracing the soul's uncertain progress from brute survival to transcendent receptivity and affirmation. Insightfully introduced by poet laureate Louise Gluck, Reece's striking debut yields new revelations with each reading., "Inside everything was Episcopalian- / the wicker chaise lounges, the small spotted mirrors, / the rattan dining room set, the tears." Reece's evocation of a family house on Cape Cod, eventually sold, exemplifies the twin currents of detached humor and sorrow that run through his début collection. The most effective poems here are autobiographical, recording early family life; a period spent recovering from a nervous breakdown in hospitals and borrowed houses ("My legacy is to leave the room empty"); and a new life in retail-hence the title. Reece's poems are saved from solipsism by a keen alertness to the characters around him and to the consolations of the natural world. Animals please him, because they are happier than people-"The ponies said: This day astounds us. The field is green." And resignation brings with it a kind of peace, as in a poem written on the poet's birthday in a lonely Florida town: "It is not Paris it is not Florence / but it has majesty in its anonymity."

TitleLeadingThe

Dewey Decimal811/.6

Table Of ContentContents Foreword by Louise Glück Portofino The Clerk's Tale Chiaroscuro A Bestiary i. The Snake ii. The Frog iii. The Bat iv. The Cat v. The Elephant Tonight Then Chrysanthemums Autumn Song Midnight Winter Scene Diminuendo Ghazals for Spring Cape Cod Ponies Triptych i. Politics ii. Homosexuality iii. Easter Étude Florida Ghazals Interior Addresses i. To You ii. Divinity Avenue iii. To My Brother iv. Pentimento v. Coda vi. United Hospital vii. Blue viii. To Those Grown Mute ix. Fugue x. To Martha My Nurse xi. Minneapolis xii. Beverly Road xiii. Afton xiv. Two Bright Rooms xv. Boca Raton xvi. Loxahatchee xvii. Summerland Key xviii. Worth Avenue xix. I Have Dreamed of You So Much xx. Vizcaya Interlude Morbidezza

SynopsisIn a powerful debut collection, fifty new poems by a poet who works in a mall men's store evokes the memory of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales while exploring the quite monastic life of two employees at Brooks Brothers. Original., In a recent double fiction issue, The New Yorker devoted the entire back page to a single poem, "The Clerk's Tale," by Spencer Reece. The poet who drew such unusual attention has a surprising background: for many years he has worked for Brooks Brothers, a fact that lends particular nuance to the title of his collection. The Clerk's Tale pays homage not only to Chaucer but to the clerks' brotherhood of service in the mall, where "the light is bright and artificial, / yet not dissimilar to that found in a Gothic cathedral."The fifty poems in The Clerk's Tale are exquisitely restrained, shot through with a longing for permanence, from the quasi-monastic life of two salesmen at Brooks Brothers to the poignant lingering light of a Miami dusk to the weight of geography on an empty Minnesota farm. Gluck describes them as having "an effect I have never quite seen before, half cocktail party, half passion play . . . We do not expect virtuosity as the outward form of soul-making, nor do we associate generosity and humanity with such sophistication of means, such polished intelligence . . . Much life has gone into the making of this art, much patient craft.", In a recent double fiction issue, The New Yorker devoted the entire back page to a single poem, "The Clerk's Tale," by Spencer Reece. The poet who drew such unusual attention has a surprising background: for many years he has worked for Brooks Brothers, a fact that lends particular nuance to the title of his collection. The Clerk's Tale pays homage not only to Chaucer but to the clerks' brotherhood of service in the mall, where "the light is bright and artificial, / yet not dissimilar to that found in a Gothic cathedral." The fifty poems in The Clerk's Tale are exquisitely restrained, shot through with a longing for permanence, from the quasi-monastic life of two salesmen at Brooks Brothers to the poignant lingering light of a Miami dusk to the weight of geography on an empty Minnesota farm. Gluck describes them as having "an effect I have never quite seen before, half cocktail party, half passion play . . . We do not expect virtuosity as the outward form of soul-making, nor do we associate generosity and humanity with such sophistication of means, such polished intelligence . . . Much life has gone into the making of this art, much patient craft."

LC Classification NumberPS3618.E4354C58 2004