This winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize was chosen by Adrienne Rich, who praises it as “intimate and erotic work… The music evoked in this book is transcendent in its reaches.” This collection is rooted in jazz, blues, and soul music, and debuts a voice that is by turns vampish and whispering as it sings the supple harmonies and lush dissonances of human connections.
ISBN: 9780966339581
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780966339574
Format: Hardcover
from “Spheres”
after Monk
a brand burned into naked wood Property of PS 129
an old-time upright wheeled out to the playground
paradiddle & round the back hand clap
& tight coil rhythm bounce eyes closed smoke stained
finger tips tangent to ivory sunshine in wide-open mouth
light poured like syrup fast twitch reflex & cold
trust an amber lyric between blurry
strangers
Reviews
“Ed Pavlić, in his mid-thirties, has made a complex and beautiful first book. He must and will go further, because he can. It’s a judge’s pleasure to be able to point such a book toward the readers it deserves and who deserve it.” —Adrienne Rich, from the introduction
“A contained, structural improvisation focuses each poem in a white space underlying the text—held like a mantra of boiled-down innuendo that is tinted with the blues and jazz of literary-cultural folklore.” —Yusef Komunyakaa
“Ed Pavlić’s Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue is one of the most beguiling and compelling volumes of poetry—jazz-licked or otherwise—to leap onto the literary stage. Impish, elegant, extraordinarily complex, and at times breathtaking, Ed Pavlić’s verses are truly remarkable in their language, rhythm, and ambition.” —Bloomsbury Review