The Silhouette of the Bridge (Memory Stand-Ins)

By Keith Waldrop

Fiction. "THE SILHOUETTE OF THE BRIDGE (Memory Stand-ins) is a beautifully spare and inventive work of reflection on the elusive nature of memory, perception and experience. As we would expect from Keith Waldrop, it is suffused with a particular humanity and an appreciation for the absurd, even the grotesque, in daily life. The rhythmic apposition of prose and poetry brings to mind the freedom, alertness and quality of distillation in Basho's classic travel sketches. With his quietly precise sense of modulation and his unerring gaze, Waldrop remains one of the vital and requisite, semi-secret presences in American letters" - Michael Palmer.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 188071308X
• ISBN13: 9781880713082
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Avec Books
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Poet's Novel

The wisened poet out of Providence, Keith Waldrop, pens one of the finest American "novels" in recent memory. At first glance, the book may read like further lines of poetry from the virtuoso from Brown University. Indeed, each line falls on the page as a poetic shadow stepping out of his memory; but just as the piece (subtitled "Memory Stand-Ins") locks its gaze on more than memories, so does the book of lines talk like a novel once undressed by a careful and complete read. A novel where the chief character may be the mind, thought the action, and time the antagonist, but a novel nonetheless, "Silhouette of the Bridge" rewards a patient reading. The most recent crop from years of cultivating the vine, these lines, if sipped, will individually inspire the palate. But more, they will return the reader to his/her world with eyes slightly inebriated and a mind, as if from a dream, filled to the lip with someone else's memory.