®

Today's poem is "Antlers in the Conference Room"
from Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles

Cleveland State University Poetry Center

Lee Upton is the author of The Tao of Humiliation: Stories, the essay collection Swallowing the Sea: On Writing & Ambition Boredom Purity & Secrecy; the novella The Guide to the Flying Island; and a fifth collection of poetry, Undid in the Land of Undone. She is a professor of English and the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College.

Other poems by Lee Upton in Verse Daily:
July 5, 2013:   "Song of the Jellyfish" "If I’m sap in a bladder or a..."
February 12, 2012:   "Ode to Ink" "There has to be a heart in a book..."
March 3, 2009:   "Dear Succubus" "Ornery and ancient..."
November 25, 2007:   "The Table" "To rise from the table..."
April 25, 2006:   "Undid in the Land of Undone" " All the things I wanted to do and didn't..."

Books by Lee Upton:

Other poems on the web by Lee Upton:
"The Apology"
"The Coast of Apples"
"And Though She Be But Little, She is Fierce"
"Dyserotica"
"Drunk at a Party"
"Sure"
Two poems
"Toasts"
"Censorship"
"The Broom"
"The Decorator Crab"

Lee Upton according to Wikipedia. About Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles:

"Lee Upton is a poet of rare intelligence and craft. She has a cold eye and a warm heart, and her poems are well-made, moving, intellectually stimulating. Among my favorites in BOTTLE THE BOTTLES THE BOTTLES THE BOTTLES, her admirable new collection, are poems that resemble an unconventional verse essay on a subject disclosed in the poem's title. Anyone who has spent dreary hours in time-consuming meetings will enjoy Upton's transmutation of the experience in 'The Committee.' A meditation on 'The Defeatists'—people whose reflexive mantra is 'we're not out of the woods yet'—includes the paradox that even their search for disappointment is bound to result in failure. In 'Modesty,' Scheherazade, the 'patron saint of suspense,' beguiles her tyrant with her tales, though 'At some level // she could do nothing for him.' This thought is capped off with the stunning couplet that ends the poem: 'Neither could have / Chekhov.' These are poems to read, reread, and ponder. The rich heritage of English poetry—Herrick, Keats, Poe, Dickinson, Wallace Stevens—hovers over Upton's labors and adds an extra layer of wit for the discerning reader."
—David Lehman

"These poems have tensile strength and pleasurable intelligence. They're muscular and ironic. Some are tough minded and thistle-prickly (as Flannery O'Connor was tough and prickly, also with a dash of Plath). The swallowed violence in fairy tales and 'the romantic' is reimagined here. Female archetypes are one of Upton's touchstones: Pandora, Salome, mermaids, Lady Macbeth, Persephone. The poems interrogate ways we used to live versus what we're in the grip of now. And they question what beauty is, in a voice both droll and fierce. They give off a dark gleam."
—Amy Gerstler



Support Verse Daily
Sponsor Verse Daily!

Home  Archives  

Copyright © 2002-2015 Verse Daily All Rights Reserved