Death of a Ventriloquist

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Publication Year: 2012

This debut collection includes love songs and prayers, palinodes and pleas, short histories and tragic tales as well as a series of ventriloquist poems that track the epiphanies and consequences of speaking in a voice other than one’s own. Other poems speak to a Beloved and the highs and lows of parenthood and personhood—all with music and verve, with formal dexterity, with sadness and humor, with an intimate voice that can both whisper in our ears and grab us by the collar and implore us to listen. “What drives the poems in this wonderfully animated debut volume and prompts the reader’s pleasure in them is the patent honesty of the poet’s voice. In the ‘ventriloquist’ series itself, Fay-LeBlanc creates a remarkable refracted self-portrait, bristling with moments of unabashed illumination.”—Eamon Grennan, author of Out of Sight

Published by: University of North Texas Press

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Book Details

E-ISBN-13: 9781574414554
Print-ISBN-13: 9781574414479

Page Count: 80
Publication Year: 2012

Series Title: Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry

Death of a Ventriloquist

Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

1

Rider Unhorsed

On Leaving Home

Guide

The Largest of the Circus Animals

Oakland Work Crew

Worry Bone

Notes on Thirty Years in the Life of a Ventriloquist

The End of Reading

Learning to Wait

Inspiration

American Beech

Ventriloquist on an Off-Day

2

Panic Grass and Feverfew

Phaëton

Ventriloquist on the Moor

Still Life, Young Woman at the Water’s Edge

Park City Grille

A Brief History of the Decline

The Origin of Pigeons

One of the Dummies at Night

3

Explanation Beginning with a River

Maker

Wildflowers of North America

Self-Portrait as a Word Ending in E

Notes on Colic

How to Make Fatherhood Lyrical

Music in My Head

Death of a Ventriloquist

4

Proof #4

Visiting Chicago

Four Planes of Experience

Rattling Funicular

Caravaggio’s Peter

The Prayer of Glass

Disabused Sonnet

The Perhaps World

Pull

The Worst First Line

More Matter, Less Art

The Nots

Notes

Research Areas

Recommend

Subject Headings

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