Far side of the earth

by Tom Sleigh

"Tom Sleigh brings to his new collection his trademark intensity and craftsmanship. In these poems, small things reveal large metaphysical and historical correspondences. In "Newsreel, for instance, the entire Cold War era comes to a drive-in movie theater, as Marilyn Monroe's screen image gives way to a tale of sci-fi Armageddon. In the elegiac "New York American Spell, 2001," he combines ancient spells with reportage of terrorism. Sleigh's overarching theme is the ever-changing face of love. Like Ovid's Metamorphoses, his poems reveal the workings of eros, for good or ill, in all its public and private guises." "Sleigh here mixes the streetwise edginess of popular culture with Greek and Latin references, myths, and dramatic lyric. His unexpected fusion of poetic forms grounds these poems in what is familiar, but also in what is on the far side of experience in the most sinister and transcendent aspects of contemporary reality."--BOOK JACKET.