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Changeable Thunder marks David Baker's emergence as a major contemporary poet. To his abiding sense of the Midwest—its politics, people, and landscapes—Baker adds a powerful historical dimension, with poems ranging from Puritan New England to the modern subway. Of particular note are poems on the works of other writers, as he reanimates Shelley's letters, Samuel Sewall's diaries, and Walt Whitman's novel. With brilliant technique, dazzling formal variety, and moving intimacy, Baker's poems explore personal illness, erotic and familial passion, artistic creation, and the constant work and changing weather of one man's life. "The poems collected here are supple and capacious, revitalizing in their engagements with American consciousness and American vernaculars. . . . Baker writes with the distilled, distinguished attentiveness only the finest poets can reliably command." —Linda Gregerson, author of Negative Capability: Essays on Contemporary American Poetry (forthcoming 2001)
—Marilyn Hacker, author of Squares and Courtyards: Poems 2001 David Baker is a professor of English at Denison University and the author of several books available from the University of Arkansas Press. |
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How hard this life is hallowed by the body. handful by handful, the broken earth of her. "A child is a man in a small letter," wrote handling dimmes and defaces.". . .
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Changeable
Thunder