Jinzhou, Kyoto, Baltimore: Poems New and Selected
Jinzhou, Kyoto, Baltimore: Poems New and Selected
Publication date: April 10, 2024
Poems of a nearly forgotten China caught in abject poverty. A long sonnet sequence full of jokes and puns, inspired by the transcendental energies of the gardens of Kyoto. A sequence of tanka-like images celebrating America's western mountains, deserts and shores. A longer work detailing a ten-year-old's attempts to understand his uncle's death in Vietnam. A semiautobiographical epic expressing the inner life of a man caught in a savage ice storm. Jinzhou, Kyoto, Baltimore is an inspiring, forthright book, which never shrinks from taking on the contradictions of the inner life and resolving them through the art of poetry.
Praise
"Scott has a unique voice that transports readers to an intense lyrical landscape rich with vivid experiences and characters, and the speaker in his poems allows us to encounter an imagination full of wonder and insight."
—Juan Delgado, author of Vital Signs, winner of the American Book Award.
"The music, imagery and thought of these pages brings to mind nothing so much as a cellist playing a powerful improvised piece on a hillside or shoreline, at one with his thoughts, his muse, his art. Scott Francis lives and writes in an air that most poets barely ever sip."
—Shawn Levy, bestselling author of Castle on Sunset, Paul Newman, A Life, and a Year in the Life of Death.