{"product_id":"9780295805856","title":"No Starling: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe new century peeled me bone bare like a song\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003einside a warbler - that bird, people,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewho knows not to go where the sky's\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estopped.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOver the years, Nance Van Winckel's extraordinarily precise and energetic voice has built upon its strengths. Unpredictable, wry, always provocative, displaying a sureand startling command of images and ideas, her poems make every gesture of language count. In No Starling, Van Winckel accomplishes what has proven to be so difficult for poets across time: a deeply satisfying balance of the spiritual and political. Although richly peopled with figures from this and parallel worlds - Simone Weil, Verlaine, Nabokov, Eurydice, \"the new boys\" working in the morgue, and others - No Starling moves beyond a reliance on the dramatic resonance of individual characters. Its vision is deeper, its focus both singular and communal: the self on its journey through the world (\"Mouth, mouth: my light \/ and my exit. Let nothing \/ block the route\"), and our responsibilities as a people for the precarious state of that world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSlate\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy too-sharp lefts kept making the bundle in back\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003esluice right. I was driving with the dead Nance\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ein the truck bed. The gas gauge didn't work\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eso there was an added worry of running\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eout of juice. Her word. Her word one\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewindy evening with the carpets\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estripped from a floor, which\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003esurprised us as stone - slate\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003efrom the quarry we were\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eheaded to now, but Let's first have us\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003esome juice, she'd said, then, barefoot on bare slate.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe truck-bedded Nance, wrapped in her winding sheet,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethuds left, clunks right. I'm sorry about my driving,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003esorry about the million lovely pine moths mottled\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eon my windshield. Thank God, here's the quarry,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eand there's the high ledge, where, as a girl long\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eago, she'd stepped bravely from the white\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003etowel and stared down. Then she'd held her nose\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eand leapt out into it - this same cool and radiant air.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Washington Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47120591782128,"sku":"9780295805856","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780295805856_p0.jpg?v=1763682929","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780295805856","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}