the vanishings & other poems

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by Elizabeth Myhr

Release: September 2011
$15/Book, Free Domestic Shipping
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Praise for the vanishings & other poems

“Elizabeth Myhr, a veteran jazz pianist of 15 years, takes on the medium of poetry, and her poems are terribly satisfying to read. It makes sense that many years of jazz performance might help to map out a beautifully tuned poem. The themes of this collection are time and light, and Myhr explores the limits of language to express emotion and experience. Calypso Editions is a collectively run press of sophisticated poetry and fiction, and Myhr’s work is no exception. In fact, it sets the standard.”  – Hey Small Press

 

Books & Culture has included the vanishings as one of its three top poetry books of 2011.

 

“…[W]hat Myhr accomplishes, and what places this book way above and beyond any other such debut in a generation is that she is able to be a realist and to step outside of time in the same poem, often in the same line. Her work is filled with…the urgency of the late 20th/early 21st century. We recognize the landscape of the ‘exile’ which is very much of our own moment.”

                                                            –Ilya Kaminsky

“I marvel at the beauty, fragility and longing of these poems with their lost masterpieces, the house one can’t find or can’t get into, the orphans, the telephone that rings and rings. Not that the poems regret a lost love or any particular past. They knock at some door of mystery, which, because we exist in bodies, we simply can’t open. the vanishings is deeply thought provoking, untranslatable and brilliant.”

–Jeanne Murray Walker

“The poems open our world to us by planting exquisite details and subverting syntax. The subversion creates apertures between fragments. The fragments are as energetic and color-saturated as van Gogh’s brush strokes. As inviting and interrupted as Eros. What isn’t apparent is always alive in its own negation, its own deep shadow. When Elizabeth Myhr calls us to join her, we’re ready to “drop every tool and run toward the vanishing.” What’s left, the palpable presence, is ourselves drawn anew.”

—Jeanine Hathaway

About the Book

the vanishings & other poems was written between 2007 and 2010. Individual poems from the book have appeared in Poetry International, Floating Bridge Review, and Knock Magazine.

Excerpt:

from night geographies

in the oldest part of the city I would lose my eyes
but in this domed world I leave the house of afternoons
with its torn paper flowers and dangling ribbons
and empty market stalls covered in feathers and dust

in the city the streets are black and filled with a green music
played only by the tiny incomparable orchestras of rain

I am leaving the blank empty houses

on the city’s high avenue a huge elm stands
like a dancer waiting for music

I am alone in a long coat
evening has arrived to cover me

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201460_10151484190097683_759609943_oAbout the Author:

Elizabeth Myhr is a poet, editor and freelance product development manager. She holds an MFA in poetry from Seattle Pacific University and lives in Seattle with her family.

News, Events & Reviews

Readings

  • Seattle, October 15, 2011 – Book Launch Party
  • Seattle, February 3, 2012 – Open Books
  • San Diego, March 19, 2012, Living Writers Series at San Diego State University, sponsored by Poets & Writers
  • Seattle, August 17, 2012 – Bookworm Exchange

Reviews

Bulk Orders
Prices for individual and bookstore orders: All Calypso Editions titles are priced at $15 per book. All bookstore and bulk orders of 20 copies or more qualify for a 30 percent discount. Please contact Customer Service at piotr@calypsoeditions.org for details.

Shipping Information

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To Canada: $1/book
To international addresses: Discounted flat rate of $6 per book. Multiple orders qualify for an additional shipping discount.

 

Skills

Posted on

September 16, 2011