Either/Ur

By Shawn Sturgeon

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1880216566
• ISBN13: 9781880216569
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Elliott & Clark Pub.
• Length: 91 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

excerpt from intro. by Richard Howard

"...Certainly all poems are "about" the myths in which we live and move and have our being, but in most cases the poet-especially the new poet-does not know where such being is to be had. In this, as in other respects (the matter of suavity, the matter of rhetorical freshness), Sturgeon is exceptional. It accounts, this exceptional status of his, for why and how he is able to arrive at the impossible wisdom he offers so readily, as when he observes [sic] of "monuments": One should not judge them harshly, these monuments,all our words arise from such deserted places--whereby he makes the connection between our words, our poems, and our historical mythos. When I call such transactions with sagesse "impossible", I mean that it seems out of the question that anything this graceful could be this staunch, but there it is, as when at the end of "Horsemen Overlooking Pig Valley" Sturgeon sums up whatever heroism is left us:We move to a furthering flame.Indeed so lucud is this poet's entertainment of what Henry James called "the visitable past", that I think I can even identify what his particular myth (or mouth) of history may be-assisted as I have been by the title he gives this remarkable first book. His punning resonance refers, I believe, to the tragic (though so often comically perceived) alternative nature of the past, the fact that it might have passed differently, the winners be the losers, the losers still losers but of a different battle. There is no standard version, no unimpeachable past, only variants, choices, alternatives. Sturgeon's Kierkegaardian resonance, Either/Ur, puts this to perfection."

Finally, Something Different

What is most surprising about this book is its freshness. But what is also surprising is how much wit and wisdom it contains, considering that this is the poet's first book. And listen to how these poems sing. Why, it's like the poet is actually unafraid of making poetry. Yet, at the same time, it's got an edge. To wit, the coyote poems. Funny! I loved it, and anybody who's really serious about poetry should love it too.