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1998 |
Jackknife
and Light
The poems of Jackknife & Light (which was a finalist in the National Poetry Series of 1996) give their meanings up slowly, with a languorous precision and care. They aspire to -- and demand --what Murphy defines as a unique "method of looking" and reading...and thinking. In these poems, reality and its inhabitants are shattered, scattered, and then re-formed and refracted through Murphy's singular vision. Lovers couple and break apart; loved ones arrive and depart; grief gives way to joy; even physical reality has a life and energy of its own. "We know the speed of sound as it travels through this town," she writes, "the subterranean hiss of hills as they make ready to burn." Through it all runs what Murphy refers to as a "red thread" of existence which she weaves into dense tapestries of emotion, ambiguity, and mystery. |
