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Imaginary Logic
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Imaginary Logic Hardback - 2011 - 1st Edition

by Rodney Jones

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A collection of 35 new poems that will reinforce Rodney Jones's reputation as one of America's most versatile narrative poets.

Summary

A new collection from a Kingsley Tufts Award–winning poet

Imaginary Logic is a brilliantly expansive, deeply meditative, and at times wildly imaginative collection of poems that combines Rodney Jones’s distinctive storytelling ability, sharp social intelligence, and keen powers of observation in a book that is wistful, satiric, audacious, and remorseless.

“The Art of Heaven” opens with a parody of Dante and a down-home, twisted humor that Jones’s readers have come to rely on: “In the middle of my life I came to a dark wood, / the smell of barbecue, kids running in the yards. / Not deep depression. This nice hell of suburbs. / Speed bumps. The way things aren’t quite paradise.”

Rodney Jones, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, is one of America’s “best, most generous, and most brilliantly readable poets” (Poetry). Imaginary Logic is the most eloquent expression yet of his rigorous mind, scrupulous eye, and capacious heart.

Reader reviews for Imaginary Logic

From the publisher

A new collection from a Kingsley Tufts Award-winning poet

Imaginary Logic is a brilliantly expansive, deeply meditative, and at times wildly imaginative collection of poems that combines Rodney Jones's distinctive storytelling ability, sharp social intelligence, and keen powers of observation in a book that is wistful, satiric, audacious, and remorseless.

"The Art of Heaven" opens with a parody of Dante and a down-home, twisted humor that Jones's readers have come to rely on: "In the middle of my life I came to a dark wood, / the smell of barbecue, kids running in the yards. / Not deep depression. This nice hell of suburbs. / Speed bumps. The way things aren't quite paradise."

Rodney Jones, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, is one of America's "best, most generous, and most brilliantly readable poets" (Poetry). Imaginary Logic is the most eloquent expression yet of his rigorous mind, scrupulous eye, and capacious heart.

Details

  • Title Imaginary Logic
  • Author Rodney Jones
  • Binding Hardback
  • Edition number 1st
  • Edition 1
  • Pages 96
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Houghton Mifflin, Boston
  • Publication date 2011-10-25
  • ISBN 9780547479781 / 0547479786
  • Weight 0.6 lbs (0.27 kg)
  • Dimensions 9 x 6 x 0.64 in (22.86 x 15.24 x 1.63 cm)
  • Category Poetry
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2010049829
  • Dewey Decimal Code 811.54

Excerpt

In the Days of Magical Realism

I went everywhere with invisible
camera crew and musicians.
Portaged by lust, convinced it was beauty.

Washington, early spring, 1976,
three girls moving away from the cab,
speaking French, as I crawled in,

and one, faux-blond, with pearls,
decked out in hotpants and shawl —

I saw her as a zoologist sees a pet
detransmogrifying from a carpet

and was wondering might this ideal
suggest goddess, hooker, or model

when the look she threw back over one shoulder
rendered into stone the eyes
with which I had seen myself.

Voice Making the Sounds of Engines

Aging imaginary playmates,
arbiters of loneliness
and childhood, have they
fallen on hard times,
sleeping under bridges
and eating from trash bins?

When I knew them,
they already had wives,
experience in the military,
and full-time jobs:
mechanic, truck driver,
steam shovel engineer.

In the shadows under
the house of women,
they used to help me
with heavy equipment,
laying out boulevards
for a city of missing men.

Idols, stooges, parrot
and laminate of vox
mundi, backfiring, doubleclutching,
from this distance
they seem stalled
in the fifties and leaking grease.

Except for the clean,
well-spoken one,
twisting his mustache
like an appellate judge
or ambassador from
the commonwealth of mothers.

And the rooster Caesar,
worm-poaching with
harem and sycophants.
Vuden, vuden, we would go,
and he would show us
the nature of masculinity.

Ambition

The new house had the air
of a stationary ark
ready to set out: the flood
a freshet in each faucet,

the shine and lacquer smell,
pecan floors, transfigurations
of porcelain and enamel.
Each plug-in was an owl’s face

being attacked by a snake.
The fear that he might slip
and flush down the toilet
balanced his wishing

the Apaches could leap
from the television. Meanwhile,
since the carpenters
had left a few light boards

stacked by the door, he plundered
the vacant house in the field
for wings, six years old
with an airplane to build.

 

Media reviews

"Middle age, masculinity, competition, religion, football, and the art of poetry itself spin together into powerful ironies in some of the best poems Jones has created so far: 'I had a dream,' one begins, 'of harnessing and exacting irrevocable power over others... in the cleat-pocked, dried dirt of a practice field.'" --Publishers Weekly

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Imaginary Logic
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Imaginary Logic

by Jones, Rodney

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by Jones, Rodney

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Imaginary Logic
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Imaginary Logic

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Used - Good. Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.
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Imaginary Logic

Imaginary Logic

by Rodney Jones

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2011. Hardcover. Very Good. Disclaimer:A copy that has been read, but remains in excellent condition. Pages are intact and are not marred by notes or highlighting, but may contain a neat previous owner name. The spine remains undamaged. An ex-library book and may have standard library stamps and/or stickers. At ThriftBooks, our motto is: Read More, Spend Less.Dust jacket quality is not guaranteed.
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Imaginary Logic: Poems
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Imaginary Logic

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