No Second Eden

Poems

Turner Cassity

Publication Year: 2002

â€œAs jaded as Naipaul, as funny as the early Waugh, Cassity turns phrases upside down, and pieties inside out, in forms that are at once pithy and meticulous.â€? â€”Kirkus Reviews If you think that Turner Cassity has mellowed or slowed down since the 1998 release of his selected poems, The Destructive Element, think again. In No Second Eden Cassity is back more Swiftian than ever. Among the targets reduced to ruin are countertenors, parole boards, the French Symbolists, calendar reformers, the Yale Divinity School, and the cult of Elvis. Without turning a blind eye, he even extends a toast to Wernher von Braun. Surprisingly, there is a poem about the Mississippi in which Cassity grew up. Unsurprisingly, it is a vision quite unlike others of that state. Its chilly and amusing precision is about as far from Southern Gothic as you can get, although elsewhere there are faint hints of a failed Good Ole Boy. Indeed, the final poems in the collection are a bit more personal than one expects of this writer. As rigorous in form as they are in feeling, the poems of No Second Eden are not for those with preconceived ideas of poetry or its purpose. Early in Cassityâ€™s career, James Merrill described Cassityâ€™s work as â€œan opera house in the jungle.â€? True so far as it goes, but he might also have called it the jungle in the opera house: a glimpse at the savagery behind every faÃ§ade. Turner Cassity has steadily published formal verse for 40 years. He is a native of Jackson, Mississippi, lives in Decatur, Georgia. A prolific poet, he has published nine other collections, including Between the Chains, about which the New York Times remarked, â€œIf you require your poets to be politically correct, donâ€™t buy Turner Cassityâ€™s book.â€?

Published by: Ohio University Press

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Book Details

E-ISBN-13: 9780804040044
Print-ISBN-13: 9780804010511

Publication Year: 2002

No Second Eden

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

A Member of the Mystik Krewe

The Metrist at the Operetta

Stylization and Its Failures

WTC

Cities of the Plain and Fancy

Not to Seize the Moment

Transpositions

Aurora Borealis of the Inner Eye

The Creatures of Prometheus

Uses of Hot Air

Junkerdom in Huntsville

Distant Early Warning

The Dueling Scar

Karl and Julius and Gregory, or, Are You a Fructidor?

Sonar Readings

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

A Diamond Is Forever

Oysters and Other Workers

Smile Please

Adam with a Garden Hose

Let My People Go, but not without Severance Pay

Manual vs. White Collar

Program Notes for an Orgy

In the Matter of Graven Images

Sensitivity Training: The Safecracker

J. P. Morgan

Neckties

A Different Perspective on A Rebours

Favorites

Crime and Punishment

Boxcar Arthur and Other Myth

Boxcar Arthur, the Sequel

Enola Gay Rights

The Second-Guesser

Estate Planning

I Dreamed Last Night I Went Again to Manderley

Victory

In the Receiving Line

Venerations

Hanging On

Why Geriatrics Are Not Sacrificed

Watching the Stopwatch Stopping

The Ultimate National Monument

The Grateful Minimalist

Research Areas

Recommend

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