{"product_id":"9781942956167","title":"the moon, not the finger, pointing","description":"'The moon, not the finger, pointing' is a sort of memoir - a collection of 67 lyric poems that trace the course of a life from the Texas Panhandle through Chicago to China and back, with the window open \"because everybody knows \/ by now there is a poem out there.\" In Chicago, \"a street musician \/ plays Vivaldi on violin not two blocks from \/ a kid shaking a cup half full of coins, \/ keeping time to Public Enemy, \/ still fighting the power \/ on an old boom box\" and an encounter with two cops asking after \" a woman in red talking crazy\" ends with \"a solemn vow to speak truth \/ to power, to tell all \/\/ next time an armed patrol stops me \/ to ask about speaking in public \/ and what I see when I hear it.\" In Shenzhen, \"we wander slowly through \/ a long talk on cracks in neo- \/\/ liberal cities where artists live. \/ A friend of friends says \/ strong German beer \/ has made her dizzy and I look \/\/ like Marx.\" Along the way, \"Every common road is \/ lined with recollection.\" Reading Arkansas Testament in a bar in Springfield, Missouri, \"the sound sense of a sentence \/ I think might be Mingus creeps in \/ between Walcott's invocation \/ of Richard Pryor and \/ his Newark, the appearance of a messiah \/ nowhere more evident than on every corner \/ here as he says it is there-and \/\/ hearing Hampton's vibraphone rising \/ from a sea of sound that signifies nothing, \/ I believe.\" And in the end, \"The hand \/ evolved for nothing, the way \/ the universe turns. It is \/\/ what it has done, what \/ it does, what it will \/ do. It is \/\/ the moon, not \/ the finger, \/\/ pointing.\"","brand":"Lamar University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47051168776432,"sku":"9781942956167","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781942956167_p0.jpg?v=1763800551","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781942956167","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}