Flight

by Katharine Coles

Thoughtful and intelligent, the poems in Flight are still fully embodied, rooted entirely in the senses, and extending Coles's ongoing examination of the big What is the relation of art and science? What are our different ways of knowing, and how do we participate in and understand them? What are the potentials and limitations of perception and intuition? What is the relationship between the perceiver and the perceived, and can the boundaries between them be broken down? And never least, What what does all this tell us about our capacity for love and pleasure, and how does love influence the ways we address the other questions? These poems are deeply engaged with the pleasures of the sensuous, treating thought itself as a sensual activity, as a kind of passion in its own right. William Carlos Williams said, "No ideas but in things"; Coles seems to want to assert that there is no thing—moon, bat, moth, dog, beloved husband—that will not give rise to ideas, and, very often, to pleasure at the same time. More than anything, pleasures are what the poems seek to create and enact—the pleasures of the flesh, yes; and of the mind that is also of the flesh, and that is so present in the poems.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published April 4, 2016

About the author

Katharine Coles(born ) is an American poet and educator. She served from 2006-2012 as Utah's third poet laureate and currently serves as the inaugural director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute and the co-director of the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature.

Coles earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Washington. She later earned a master's degree from the University of Houston and her Ph.D from the University of Utah.

Coles received the PEN New Writer’s Award in 1992. Her 2001 poetry collection, The Golden Years of the Fourth Dimension, received the Utah Book Award. In 2012, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review of "Flight" in 15-Bytes http://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/index.php/the-poetic-finesse-of-katharine-coles-flight/

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Katharine Coles's mind, her ability to lyrically grapple with the scientific specimens, the works of art, the wonders of nature that thrive on the shelves of her language. Bonus for me is how much poetry she devotes to her beloved dogs. I cry with every one.