One Summer Evening at the Falls
9780226737119
9780226737256
One Summer Evening at the Falls
The poems in this collection capture the fantastic feeling of falling in love, all while keeping eyes on its lifecycles of crashing aftermaths, lingering regrets, guilt, and renewal. Peter Campion brings us to a series of scenes—on the damp patio, in the darkroom, and along the interstate—where we find familiar characters, lovers, and strangers. In the title poem, he takes us to the falls, where people and passions mix amid the sticky hanging mists:
That charge of summer nights, that edge, like everyone’s checking
everyone out. Lingering a moment in the crowd
gathered to watch the rush and crash and let the mist
drift upward to our faces, I’m here: the future feels
open again. Even alone tonight—still: open.
Campion’s poems introduce us to a range of people, all of whom are rendered with distinctiveness and intimacy. Their voices proliferate through the collection, with lyric folding into speech, autobiography becoming dramatic monologue, and casual storytelling taking on a ritualistic intensity. The poems in One Summer Evening at the Falls show how each character and each moment can be worthy of love and that this love both undoes us and makes us who we are. In narrative and lyric, in formal verse and free, Campion brings contemporary playfulness together with his classical talent to create this far-reaching and tender collection.
That charge of summer nights, that edge, like everyone’s checking
everyone out. Lingering a moment in the crowd
gathered to watch the rush and crash and let the mist
drift upward to our faces, I’m here: the future feels
open again. Even alone tonight—still: open.
Campion’s poems introduce us to a range of people, all of whom are rendered with distinctiveness and intimacy. Their voices proliferate through the collection, with lyric folding into speech, autobiography becoming dramatic monologue, and casual storytelling taking on a ritualistic intensity. The poems in One Summer Evening at the Falls show how each character and each moment can be worthy of love and that this love both undoes us and makes us who we are. In narrative and lyric, in formal verse and free, Campion brings contemporary playfulness together with his classical talent to create this far-reaching and tender collection.
Reviews
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
One
One Summer Evening at the Falls
The Lingering
Bud, the Photographer
Commuters
She Dreamed a Giant Screen
Saint Anthony Falls
Le Chien
After Ovid: The House of Rumor
Two
Chorus
Ice Cream
After Sappho: The Drill
After Horace
In Memory of Terry Adkins
1. His Shoes
2. Bees
After Baudelaire: The Cover2. Bees
Sitcom Set
After Jin Eun Yung: Long Finger Poem
Three
The Street We Lived On
Greensleeves
Uncle
1. His Picture
2. The End of Your Sentence
2B2. The End of Your Sentence
1989
Pacific
One Summer Evening at the Falls (II)
Night Hill
Call
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