Poems by Vicki Karp

6 x 9, 53 pages
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-295-5, $15.95s
paper, ISBN 1-57003-296-3, $9.95t
James Dickey Contemporary Poetry
Edited by Richard Howard

ABOUT THE BOOK

A Taxi to the Flame is a journey through the streets of New York City, foreign landscapes, and past and present events. From rattling Manhattan subways where underground riders transform on Halloween night, to suburban mornings in which a hedge clipper neatens a waking vision of the world, the poems are a love story of destinations met, people remembered, and places found at the intersections of words and dreams.

This first collection of Vickie Karp's poems contains a decade of work that has appeared in magazines and journals such as the New Yorker, New Republic, New York Review of Books, Yale Review, and New York Times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vicki Karp was born in New York City in 1953 and educated at Queens College of the City University of New York. Currently a senior writer for New York public television, she was formerly on the editorial staff of The New Yorker and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for 1994.

EXCERPT

An excerpt from A Taxi to the Flame

I think of you and that time we took the cab to the East River Drive
To watch the Burns Brothers factory burn down.

We saw no people. No brothers. Just burning.
And behind it, a sunset repeating the pattern.

What I remember best were the clear delineations:
The sad wobbly factory all dark and ash and lit with borrowed menace.

The sky an anthology of color with no preface or ending.
No intention of serving as a symbol of anything.

But years later, lit by the context of your death,
I wonder about the Burns Brothers.

REVIEWS

"Vicki Karp's poetry is unfailingly lush; its evocative surface gives way to layer after layer of meaning."
"And so do we after reading Karp's book—we're that much more open beauty's unexpected nature."—New York Times