Tremolo: Poems

By Spencer Short

Book Overview

Spencer Short's Tremolo is a winner of the 2000 National Poetry Series Open Competition, selected by US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. For nearly twenty years, the National Poetry Series has discovered many new and emerging voices and has been instrumental in launching the careers of poets and writers such as Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Denis Johnson, Thylias Moss, Mark Levine, and Dionisio Martinez.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060935685
• ISBN13: 9780060935689
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

a rare book...

...a wonderful collection in every sense of the word...thank god for a book that both effects you intellectually, but also makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up...this is the kind of book that reminds you that poetry can still get you in the gut and make your head spin...smart without being pretentious, honest without being melodramatic, hopeful without being precious...this is the kind of book you expect midway through a writer's career-the fact that this is the poet's first book is a real artistic achievement...highly recommended...

more than deserving

This book jangles and pops, spins yarn and b.s. at an almost equal ratio, and is possessed of one of the purest, most complex, and thoroughly analyzed hearts (a word that is used in nearly every poem)I have encountered in a first book. It manages, through its mastery of a number of formal and situational techniques, to read variously and never seem fomulaic, yet stays in a remarkably close orbit around its core: the desire to communicate in the face of loss (of love; of the loss of true knowledge the accumulation and overflow of trivial knowledge accompanies). And yes, it approaches sentimentality, but it is this freedom to feel that seems somehow so new in these poems. I'm starting to sound like a jackass though. This is an exceedingly human book in a time when most poems seem to be written w/ calculators or by multiple choice. It is also smart as my new sailor suit with its brass buttons and serious collar. I'll be looking forward to more work by Short, but am happy to have his book now.

A TOUR DE FORCE!

Swift, sweet, irreverent, rangy and as spirited in the writing and voice work as it is splendid in design. Laced with a surprising amount of dramatic moments, little laughs and a sweet side. It's less about the dangers and pleasures of the unchained id than the giddy anarchy of the unbound imagination. Compared to most of what else is out there, though, it's so good-natured and tame that you can't help but let it win you over.

A Stunning New Poetic Voice

This is the dawning of a new poetic star. Mr. Short's verse is rivalled perhaps only by the majestic tones of Marvin Bell.

like a vintage guitar effect!

Achieves a true tremolo effect/affect in his poems with the rapid alternation between tones -at first wry then immediately sensitive, open and then oblique, lyric as much as strategic. Out there in front of irony is something else entirely -- and its deeply suspicious -- to get there requires experimental navigations and a caffienated confidence. Spencer's poems trust no one and keep on moving -- and with all their contortions, you'd think the poet would be exhausted, but he's just getting started, he's heading out for new frontiers, he's sneaking up behind you.