Modern History: Prose Poems 1987-2007

by Christopher Buckley

Poetry. This intensely personal collection of symphonic prose poems uses politics, physics, popular culture, nostalgia, and off-the-wall humor to articulate and ignite metaphysical arguments. Christopher Buckley employs a sardonic wit and poignant lyricism to wheedle clarity out of chaos and coax wisdom out of absurdity. Just as he investigates and questions the vagaries of knowledge, so does he explore the prose poem, testing and probing its boundaries to see if it will accommodate his powerful insight and decidedly original outlook. His facility with scientific precepts is matched and cleverly juxtaposed with his penchant for wacky nostalgic detail; old movies, simonized Chryslers, and doo-wop music are the backdrop for a spirited glide through twenty years of this eminent poet's pursuit of the absolute. "The extravagant lyricism, the questing intelligence, the spiritual longing, the honesty and the zany humor that mark his many previous books are all at play here"--Gary Young. This is Christopher Buckley's sixteenth book of verse. He has edited four anthologies of contemporary poems, and he is currently a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry for 2007-2008. His work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, and The Nation. He currently teaches in the creative writing department at the University of California Riverside.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008

About the author

Christopher Buckley is a poet. For 2007-2008 he was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry at the University of California Riverside.

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Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher Buckley's MODERN HISTORY: PROSE POEMS 1987-2007 is a modern classic. Buckley shows that he's a master of the prose poem and the English language. Unlike other "Selected" and "Collected" collection, the poems in MODERN HISTORY are not ordered in chronology of publication but rather autobiographically. From his time growing up in Santa Barbara before the inflated real estate to his midlife contemplation of mortality,the reader experiences the changes in wisdom of the speaker's life. My favorite poems in the collection are the ones about academia and the politics of the PoBiz such as "After a Reading, Charles Bukowski Returns and Gives Me the Lowdown on Fame, Mutability, the Afterlife, et al..," "The Assoc. Professor Crashes The Awards Program At The National Arts Club," and "My 25th Guggenheim Application." Buckley's use of fresh phrasing and dead-on imagery can't be matched.

[Jeff Streeby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smoothly musical. A different, more narratively coherent and intelligible approach to the prose poem than that of practitioners of the fracture/dislocation/fantasy aesthetics of poets like Russell Edson.