A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire
5/5
()
About this ebook
"In Andrew S. Nicholson’s A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire, what is most alive is color, that which gives itself freely, generously: ‘Follow the hopeful as they green the day’ (‘My Garage Fills with an Ever-Increasing Number of Dandelions’). Threaded throughout with Genesis, wherein Jacob wrestles an angel, this gorgeous debut collection builds a ladder firmly rooted here: in sun and earth; in varying and multiple shades of orange; in trials of father and son; in books and paintings; in abandoned casinos; in countries far from home; and/or in the sound of a door closing. Nicholson’s poems come from a man standing by himself, in what George Oppen called the ‘shipwreck of the singular,’ which includes everybody. I’m moved by the luminous generosity, the moral clarity of this work. A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire is news that will stay news.”
—Claudia Keelan, author of The Devotion Field, Missing Her, and O, Heart
"'Who doesn’t nurse a secret love?' asks Andrew S. Nicholson in visionary poems that reveal secret worlds cradled inside this one. Whether considering the casinos of Las Vegas, a fresco in Pompeii, or scenes from the Hebrew Bible, the poet endures one of desire’s more fraught paradoxes: its unchanging ability to bring change, to turn the known into the unknown. These poems bravely attend to such transformations the way Jacob—the book’s patron saint—wrestles with the angel, 'lifting all the flesh / that he can lose.' I admire this poet who knows that blessing doesn’t arrive without loss, who remembers 'I was loved once. / Beneath that love, a kindness took root.' The same sweet feeling lingers long after this book is closed. Dear reader: savor it."
—Brian Teare
"Andrew S. Nicholson’s A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire is a gorgeous book. His graceful, playful poems enchant us ('I try to make out the stranger’s face, but he’s shrinking: / a melting gray blur, an ever-smaller thorn.') and transform us ('Sink into the bathwater, any way is a way / to journey toward that joining'). Nicholson has become one of the great poets of a new and radical kind of pastoral."
—Joseph Lease
Opening the space between the ordinary and the visionary, the poems in A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire uncover an intimate relationship with the world, from Las Vegas to Italy to the American Midwest. From a lime glowing in an orchard to a miraculous childhood attempt at levitation, Andrew S. Nicholson’s poems ground themselves in the commonplace and leap for the luminous. Central to this collection are poems that retell stories of Jacob from the Old Testament, relocated behind casinos, glimpsed in miniature on kitchen floors, and heard speaking in a moment of decay. Through these retellings, Nicholson examines the creation of self, family relationships, and a generative sense of the divine.
Related to A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire
Titles in the series (19)
The Logan Notebooks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5&luckier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHouse of Sugar, House of Stone Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blue Heron Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEscape Velocity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHungry Moon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City She Was Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Verging Cities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lapidary's Nosegay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe Remain Traditional Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Two Standards Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSongs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUpper Level Disturbances Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Minuses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFurthest Ecology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe are Starved Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDears, Beloveds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5West : Fire: Archive Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related ebooks
The Smoke of Horses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Brighter Prison: A Book of Journeys Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA warm and snouting thing: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5&luckier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Darkness of Snow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReflections of Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConcrete and Wild Carrot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Melankholia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe are Starved Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEpic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Memory of Trees: The future of eucalypts and our home among them Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRainbow Dust: Three Centuries of Butterfly Delight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bones of Winter Birds Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMars Being Red Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLovely Asunder: Poems Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Little Raw Souls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cuchulainn and the Crow Queen: Ancient Legends Retold Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Identity Thief Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArmored Hearts: Selected & New Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFour in Hand Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHonorifics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wish Book: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVery in Pieces Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Spoons in the Grass Are There to Dig a Moat Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Litany for the City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlue Heron Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWest : Fire: Archive Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Calle Florista Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDown-Adown-Derry: A Book of Fairy Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related categories
Reviews for A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire
1 rating0 reviews