Thresherphobe
In his sixth collection, Mark Halliday continues to seek ways of using the smart playfulness of such poets as Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch to explore life’s emotional mysteries—both dire and hilarious—from the perpetual dissolving of our past to the perpetual frustration of our cravings for ego-triumph, for sublime connection with an erotically idealized Other, and for peace of spirit. Animated by belief in the possible truths to be reached in interpersonal speech, Halliday’s voice-driven poetry wants to find insight—or at least a stay against confusion—through personality without being trapped in personality. History will leave much of what we are on the threshing floor, Halliday notes, but in the meantime we do what we can; let posterity (if any!) say we rambled truly.
Forward Prizes for Poetry: Highly Commended for ’Classic Blunder’ and ’Lois in the Sunny Tree’
Reviews
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
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Lois in the Sunny Tree
Quite Frankly
Sweet and Dandy
Return to Elmgrove
Vacation Day in 1983
There We Were
Historic Shirt
Thanks to Acker Bilk
Frankfort Laundromat
240 Sneakers
Ted’s Elegiac Work
Bev and Broadway
Spunktilio Awaits the Biographer
Visionary Age 79
Yvette Vickers
After You Die
Classic Blunder
Just In Time
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Ferguson High
Sorority Softball
Double Reverse
Wide Receiver
La Marquise de Gloire
Flang Flight
Ducks Not in Row
Pathos of the Momentary Smile
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Huge Party
Unconversation
Before Dawn
Wheeling
Pathos of the Detective
Threshed Out
Tossed
Assisted Living
Livin’ in the World
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Lingo Bistro
New New Poetics
Thanks for Your Book
Glancers
Talented Youth
Mildewed Anthologies
Reader Depressed
His Alley Metaphor
The One for Her