Part of the Bargain

By Scott Hightower

Part of the Bargain , winner of the Hayden Carruth Award and selected from nearly 1,000 entries, is both a cabinet of curiosities and a sweep of philosophical idylls. Hightower's poems range in style and subject, with soliloquies, laments, eccentric ponderings, and contemplations of appetite and art. From Door to the Terrace You withdraw from me like a match From a final cigarette and dance every Abandonment. The strains of music That accompany you float away with you. The book's epigraph evokes a Faustian contract, which is echoed in the tensions between urban and rural, light and dark, moral and amoral action. Hightower's influences--Sappho, Virgil, Blake, and Wilde--make their presence known as he reflects upon life in urban America after growing up in rural Texas, about coming of age as a gay man, about art and artists, poetry and painting. From Spending the Night Now, in another part of the country, I hear it called "staying over." Back then, a couple of years was a gaping difference. The ornately carved door covering the strings of an upright melded into the headboard of the bed . . . Part of the Bargain also explores the imperceptible reconciliations that one makes as an individual, a part of a community, and as a conscientious heir to a culture. Valences of sexuality, nationality, literality all swirl together and perform a balancing act as the poet aspires to pull back the curtain of "the ineffable pageantry" of our multilayered lives. Scott Hightower is the author of two books of poems, Tin Can Tourist and Natural Trouble . His writings have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Salmagundi , The Yale Review , and The Paris Review . He teaches at Fordham University and New York University and is a contributing editor to The Journal . He lives in New York City.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556592329
• ISBN13: 9781556592324
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Smart, Insightful, and Clear

What a pleasure to read an artist who absolutely knows what he is doing! "Part of the Bargain" is distinguished and original. The book seems to celebrate the delicateness of the human condition while recognizing the harshness of the grief that comes with the territory. Without being arcane, archaic, or sentimental, the poems are smart, insightful, and clear. The voice is consistent--even generous. Whether song or story, Hightower is at the top of his game in every poem!

Clean and deep hitting...

From an invocation to the muse and polio in the childhood landscape to Hightower's take on "Noli Me Tangere" to a meditation on Filicide (which I had to look up) and public execution. The poems in "Part of the Bargain" are clean and deep hitting. I loved every bit of it!