We cannot verify your location
Browse Book and Journal Content on Project MUSE
OR
Browse > Creative Writing > Poetry
title

Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie

By Joshua Harmon

Publication Year: 2011

Winner of the 2010 Akron Poetry Prize, Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie is tender anti-epic, a grunge-tinged love song to America's benighted post-industrial heartland. Harmon's Poughkeepsie shimmers just beyond the borders of banal recognition. "If you're not part of the problem, / you're part of the lengthening / tragedy," Harmon writes in an introductory pastoral, seeking out "the stray / detours and workarounds of the secret / city inside the more obvious one...on the outskirts of the absurd / attention to the material life." Poughkeepsie is that city of the heart where no one can look at anyone else "alone," where "the noise of beauty" is a cop's bullet polishing off a "traffic-struck doe," where "five dollars takes you anywhere in this town / except out of it."

Published by: The University of Akron Press

Cover

pdf iconDownload PDF (818.5 KB)
 

Title Page, Copyright Page

pdf iconDownload PDF (159.5 KB)
 

Contents

pdf iconDownload PDF (144.4 KB)
pp. vii-viii

Two Pastorals

The automatic garage-door opener

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.2 KB)
pp. 3-

To Shop-Vac the sidestreet

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 4-

The Poughkeepsiad

pdf iconDownload PDF (158.8 KB)
pp. 5-12

Tableaux poughkeepsiens

I lived in one place

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.0 KB)
pp. 15-

Asbestos in carpet glue, beige linoleum in bedroom and

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.7 KB)
pp. 16-

A pole saw can reach far enough one doesn’t need a

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.7 KB)
pp. 17-

Cusp of July and August:

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.0 KB)
pp. 18-

Thin ribbons of cloud and half a ruinous moon

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.0 KB)
pp. 19-

Broken glass in the shape of

pdf iconDownload PDF (90.1 KB)
pp. 20-21

The undercity rivers beneath cast

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.2 KB)
pp. 22-

Does it help that the evening no

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 23-

Crow-scatter engraves evening, wings beating

pdf iconDownload PDF (88.7 KB)
pp. 24-

In a geography of service drives and sumac

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 25-

Deer cross against the lights

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 26-

An inquiry into more forlorn subjects neglects unsolvable

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.3 KB)
pp. 27-

The provisional, the mostly blank implied in a twenty-year

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.4 KB)
pp. 28-

The disheartened public

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 29-

The quiet streets of meth

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.0 KB)
pp. 30-

Can new tedium distract one

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 31-

Bare-branched maples, brush

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.0 KB)
pp. 32-

Not one, but dozens of solitary dandelions sparsely

pdf iconDownload PDF (88.8 KB)
pp. 33-

To build a life from happy accidents

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.2 KB)
pp. 34-

Slice of hillside

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.0 KB)
pp. 35-

We shoot everything you want to

pdf iconDownload PDF (88.9 KB)
pp. 36-

Still and slate-dark by four-thirty

pdf iconDownload PDF (88.8 KB)
pp. 37-

I slept on a varnished oak floor. I slept on scar tissue and

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 38-

To be freed from the burden

pdf iconDownload PDF (88.9 KB)
pp. 39-

The house shudders in wind

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.0 KB)
pp. 40-

Milkweed and broken sink,

pdf iconDownload PDF (90.0 KB)
pp. 41-42

Only the immeasurable

pdf iconDownload PDF (88.9 KB)
pp. 43-

Poor little Poughkeepsie,

pdf iconDownload PDF (90.0 KB)
pp. 44-45

What are the pitfalls you have come to know intimately?

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.6 KB)
pp. 46-

The quivering powerlines could be a word. A dry cleaning

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.2 KB)
pp. 47-

I’m trying to whittle this skyline down to something

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 48-

The view from basement

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.2 KB)
pp. 49-

Seed-flecked snow

pdf iconDownload PDF (90.0 KB)
pp. 50-51

It’s cinematic, the blank billboard at the edge of the

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.6 KB)
pp. 52-

The iciest particulars: I was exhausted from waking up.

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.8 KB)
pp. 53-

A parking

pdf iconDownload PDF (88.8 KB)
pp. 54-

As blackened snow retreats from curb and gutter, signs

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 55-

The perilous optic, 3 am in the back of an American

pdf iconDownload PDF (135.6 KB)
pp. 56-

O springtime foliage! This city’s last slate rooftops refute

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.6 KB)
pp. 57-

The elegance of an only focus, a trance

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 58-

Children wire stuffed

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 59-

Amid the last sentences of rusting

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 60-

The greatest poverty is not to live

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.1 KB)
pp. 61-

The absent tenant’s electricity is shut off for nonpayment

pdf iconDownload PDF (89.9 KB)
pp. 62-

Hooker Avenue Serenade

pdf iconDownload PDF (108.3 KB)
pp. 63-68

Recessive Variations

II.

pdf iconDownload PDF (136.5 KB)
pp. 74-75

For the Poughkeepsie Dead

Two Pastorals (II)

White steeple, gold

pdf iconDownload PDF (88.9 KB)
pp. 87-

Under over

pdf iconDownload PDF (88.8 KB)
pp. 88-

L’Envoi

pdf iconDownload PDF (150.3 KB)
pp. 89-91

Notes

pdf iconDownload PDF (141.9 KB)
pp. 93-


E-ISBN-13: 9781937378073
E-ISBN-10: 1937378071
Print-ISBN-13: 9781931968928
Print-ISBN-10: 1931968926

Page Count: 93
Publication Year: 2011

Series Title: Akron Series in Poetry
Series Editor Byline: Mary Biddinger, Editor

Research Areas

Recommend

UPCC logo
  • You have access to this content
  • Free sample
  • Open Access
  • Restricted Access

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the Search box at the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the results page. Use the Browse box to browse a selection of books and journals.

Connect with Project MUSE

Project MUSE | 2715 North Charles Street | Baltimore, Maryland USA 21218 | (410) 516-6989 | About | Contact | Help | Tools | Order

©2013 Project MUSE. Produced by The Johns Hopkins University Press in collaboration with The Milton S. Eisenhower Library.