Monograph: Poems

By Simeon Berry and Denise Duhamel

Written in narrow sections that blur the distinction between flash fiction and prose poetry, between memoir and meditation, Monograph veers from the elliptical to the explosive as it dissects the Gordian knot of a marriage’s intellectual, sexual, and domestic lives. Invoking Raymond Chandler, Pythagoras, Joan Didion, and Virginia Woolf as presiding spirits, Simeon Berry curates the negative space of each wry tableau, destabilizing the high seriousness of every lyric aside and slipping quantum uncertainty into the stark lineaments of loss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9780820348469

Simeon Berry

SIMEON BERRY has been an associate editor for Ploughshares, and won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant and a Career Chapter Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters. His first book, Ampersand Revisited, won the 2013 National Poetry Series. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Book preview

THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES

The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded by the Lannan Foundation; Stephen Graham; Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation; Glenn and Renee Schaeffer; Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation; and Charles B. Wright III.

2014 Competition Winners

Monograph, by Simeon Berry, chosen by Denise Duhamel, published by University of Georgia Press

The Regret Histories, by Joshua Poteat, chosen by Campbell McGrath, published by HarperCollins

Let’s Let That Are Not Yet: Inferno, by Ed Pavlić, chosen by John Keene, published by Fence Books

Double Jinx, by Nancy Reddy, chosen by Alex Lemon, published by Milkweed Editions

Viability, by Sarah Vap, chosen by Mary Jo Bang, published by Penguin Books

MONOGRAPH

monograph

poems by simeon berry

© 2015 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

All rights reserved

Set in Garamond Premier Pro

Printed and bound by Sheridan Books

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Most University of Georgia Press titles are available from popular e-book vendors.

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berry, Simeon, author.

[Poems. Selections]

Monograph / Poems by Simeon Berry.

pages cm — (The National Poetry Series)

ISBN 978-0-8203-4845-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8203-4846-9 (ebook)

I. Title.

PS3602.E76385A6   2015

811'.6—dc23

2014047578

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

For H., J., and L.

A monogram is a symbol of a person’s identity, usually made up of initials. A monograph is a treatise or detailed study of one relatively narrow topic.

—The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993)

The indirect means of arousal which are possible through words need not be dwelt upon here at length.

—C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning

Contents

I. contra preferentum

II. performance art

III. uniforms

IV. sports

V. merit badges

VI. conjecture

VII. storied

VIII. synonyms

IX. ninjas

X. what watch?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CREDITS

I. contra preferentum

Thought back