Iconoscope: New and Selected Poems

by Peter Oresick, Judith Vollmer (Editor)

Collected here are poems from Peter Oresick’s previous books, beginning with The Story of Glass (1977), and to them are added 36 new poems called Under the Carpathians . His work—known for working class and Catholic themes—probes labor and social history, post-World War II America, Eastern European identity, Eastern Rite Catholicism, and Russian icons and fine art and especially Pittsburgh-born pop art icon Andy Warhol.

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2015

About the author

Peter Oresick (pronounced o-RES-ik) is a poet, publisher, and professor.

Currently he is Associate Professor of English at Chatham University, where teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program and edits the literary journal The Fourth River . He has also taught at the The Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, Emerson College, and the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

As a publisher he served in senior positions in literary, scholarly, and technical publishing from 1981 to 2004 at the University of Pittsburgh Press, Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, and Printing Industries of America.

At the University of Pittsburgh Oresick earned a BA in Education and a MFA in Poetry.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Iconoscope: New and Selected Poems by Peter Oresick gathers together the poet's best work from two previous collections as well as newer poems that have not yet been seen in book form. Oresick's collection opens with this new work, including poems that serve as meditations ("Morning, Allegheny River") and work that is more narrative in structure ("To a Museum Guard at Shift Change"). Iconoscope also includes selected poems from Warhol-O-Rama, Oresick's 2008 book that explores the role of Andy Warhol in both the Pittsburgh landscape and general popular culture.

My favorite section of the book, however, is the selection of poems that were originally published in Oresick's Definitions (1990). Here, I found that I was revisiting a familiar landscape: a blue collar family in Ford City, Pennsylvania, a working-class town located north of Pittsburgh. In this section, Oresick records both family history and personal memories (often intertwining the two) to relay the story of working-class life.