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by: James Tate
List Price: $15.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.20 You Save: $4.80 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780880015622
ISBN: 0880015624
Label: Ecco
Manufacturer: Ecco
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 72
Publication Date: December 01, 1998
Publisher: Ecco
Release Date: July 22, 1999
Sales Rank: 651240
Studio: Ecco
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Speakers in James Tate's poems are and are not like those we know: a man's meditation on gardening renders him witless; another man traps theories and then lets them loose in a city park; a nun confides that 'it was her / cowboy pride that got her through'; a gnome's friend inhabits a world where 'a great eschatological ferment is at work. 'Shroud of the Gnome' is a bravura performance in Tate's signature style: playful, wicked, deliriously sober, charming, and dazzling. Here, once again, one of America's most masterful poets celebrates the inexplicable in his own strange tongue.
Amazon.com Review:
Reading James Tate's collection of poetry, The Shroud of the Gnome, is a little like reading Lewis Carroll's more inspired fits of nonsense minus the rhyming and with much sharper teeth. Take, for example, Tate's poem, 'Restless Leg Syndrome,' in which the narrator's leg 'flies around the room kicking stuff' It kicked the scrimshaw collection,
yes it did. It kicked the ocelot,
which was rude and uncalled for,
and yes hurtful. It kicked
the guacamole right out of its bowl,
which made for a grubby
and potentially dangerous workplace.
I was out testing the new speed bump
when it kicked the Viscountess,
which she probably deserved... ...and so on. The tone is conversational, yet the originality of the ideas, the mad scramble of images and the underlying purpose take these poems out of the realm of amusing doggerel entirely. In 'Never Again the Same' Tate imbues a sunset with terror: peaches dripping opium,
pandemonium of tangerines,
inferno of irises,
Plutonian emeralds,
and the wonder of discovery:
And then the streetlights came on as always
and we looked into one another's eyes--
ancient caves with still pools
and those little transparent fish
who have never seen even one ray of light.
And the calm that returned to us
was not even our own. We've all seen a sunset before, but Tate makes the experience wholly new.
Beneath Tate's playfulness, there's a serious mind at work. This man believes that poetry is essential to a well-rounded life. In 'Dream On' he marvels that 'Some people go their whole lives without ever writing a single poem,' and after enumerating the many ills a society without poetry suffers--everything from delinquent children to a dog that 'howls all night, lonely and starving for more poetry in his life'--he describes the blessings of poetry, the 'pure ordinariness of life seeking, through poetry, a benediction....' There may be many people in this world who have never written a poem; fortunately, James Tate is not one of them.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - The best Tate yet...
It is with the Shroud of the Gnome that Tate seems to have matured-- here is the blending of his poignant early voice and the talent of the later comic linguist. In the poem "Smart" he employs imaginatively catchy opening lines: "I had a theory for a while, but I had to let it go. / It was wasting away in captivity. / It sat there in the cage of my brain and wouldn't eat." This is Tate's gift for rare, humorous metaphor once more. Slightly off-center and yet understandable enough that you ... Read More
Rating: - Better than taking your mother to the prom.
Trying to live without this book is like trying to walk in shoes without your feet in them. Meaning, each poem is like a little exhortation to fall asleep at crucial intersections. Dream replacement therapy. You will absolutely love this book, or we'll come and stuff you full of numinal cheesecake.
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