Escape Velocity
()
About this ebook
From the moment of a marriage’s heated inception to its period of luminous crowding and onward into distance and darkness, Bonnie Arning’s Escape Velocity asks if it’s possible to exist outside the only universe we’ve ever known. In modes both lyric and narrative, we are given a peephole into the height and decline of a marriage that begins beneath the moving lights of Las Vegas, Nevada, and traverses the devastating terrain of gambling, miscarriage, infidelity, and violence.
Arning gives voice to divergent aspects of love and violence through her use of math problems, erasures, dictionary entries, structured stanzas, and sprawling free verse. This multiplicity of forms comes together to explore everything from pop culture references of domestic violence to cultural notions of victims and victimhood. However dark, collectively these poems tell a love story—an acceptance of our capability to love those who hurt us, but also the love-of-self required to slowly and steadily reach "the velocity to be everleaving."
In the tradition of Eavan Boland and Louise Glück, Arning wrestles down and examines the terrible without flinching. We journey with her, engrossed by each difficult truth: a precipice near which we are both terrified to stand and transfixed by its unnerving insistence on beauty.
Related to Escape Velocity
Titles in the series (19)
The Two Standards Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Logan Notebooks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5&luckier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHouse of Sugar, House of Stone Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blue Heron Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEscape Velocity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe City She Was Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hungry Moon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We are Starved Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSongs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe Remain Traditional Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lapidary's Nosegay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Verging Cities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dears, Beloveds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Upper Level Disturbances Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFurthest Ecology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWest : Fire: Archive Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Minuses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related ebooks
The Constant Velocity of Trains Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Jane Hirshfield's "Three Times My Life Has Opened" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOutside the Inner Dialogue: A Haiku a Day for a Year Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSixfold Poetry Summer 2019 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsESL Or You Weren't Here Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Concrete and Wild Carrot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inside Out Heart Collection: Volume 1: Poems for my dying father & after; and, Volume 2: Diary notes of being with my dying father Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHonorifics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Arranged Marriage: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It Isn’t a Ghost if It Lives in Your Chest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSo Little Time: Words and Images for a World in Climate Crisis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwice Told Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings&luckier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLitany of Flights: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMars Being Red Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPsalms of Unknowing: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMuseum of Bone and Water Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Only Bread, Only Light: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Poetry of May Sarton Volume One: Letters from Maine, Inner Landscape, and Halfway to Silence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrow-Work: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Full Velvet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slant Six Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Writer Who Inhabits Your Body: Somatic Practices to Enhance Creativity and Inspiration Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsModern and Normal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5AUX ARC TRYPT ICH: Poppycock and Assphodel; Winter; A Night of Dark Trees Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAntiquity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Measures of Expatriation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Every Little Vanishing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Quiet in Me: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Along You Were Blooming: Thoughts for Boundless Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Waste Land and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Escape Velocity
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Escape Velocity - Bonnie Arning
The Mountain West Poetry Series
Stephanie G’Schwind & Donald Revell, series editors
We Are Starved, by Joshua Kryah
The City She Was, by Carmen Giménez Smith
Upper Level Disturbances, by Kevin Goodan
The Two Standards, by Heather Winterer
Blue Heron, by Elizabeth Robinson
Hungry Moon, by Henrietta Goodman
The Logan Notebooks, by Rebecca Lindenberg
Songs, by Derek Henderson
The Verging Cities, by Natalie Scenters-Zapico
A Lamp Brighter than Foxfire, by Andrew S. Nicholson
House of Sugar, House of Stone, by Emily Pérez
&luckier, by Christopher J Johnson
Escape Velocity, by Bonnie Arning
ESCAPE VELOCITY
POEMS
BONNIE ARNING
The Center for Literary Publishing
Colorado State University
Copyright © 2017 by Bonnie Arning
All rights reserved.
For information about permission to reproduce
selections from this book, write to
The Center for Literary Publishing
attn: Permissions
9105 Campus Delivery, Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-9105.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Arning, Bonnie, author.
Title: Escape velocity : poems / Bonnie Arning.
Other titles: Mountain west poetry series.
Description: Fort Collins, Colorado : The Center for Literary Publishing, Colorado State University, [2017] | Series: The mountain west poetry series
Identifiers: LCCN 2016050021 (print) | LCCN 2016051382 (ebook) | ISBN 9781885635556 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781885635563 (electronic)
Subjects: LCSH: Marriage--Poetry.
Classification: LCC PS3601.R5824 A6 2017 (print) | LCC PS3601.R5824 (ebook) |
DDC 811/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050021
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17
Arlo,
More than the universe,
which though unbounded
is finite, infinity is not
a quantity. Infinity is
all there is: I love you
like that.
How easy to ignore the shifting of stars
when the self seems its own astronomical body.
CONTENTS
I.
Marriage Ephemera
The night Saddam Hussein died we were drunk
Las Vegas Strip, 4 a.m.
On all the nights he leaves me, a spider crawls into my head,
Escape Fallacy
Stand Burn
Tight Spaces
Clark County Reveal
Pearl
II.
Lost Body
While paying for lunch I found his wedding ring
The Fish
First Summer
Knit Tight
The Science of Sight
Model Victim
Calculus of Violent Behavior
Taking the Moon, Burning It Down
III.
Siren Song
Bleeding, Love
Victim Mentality
Five