Natural Causes: Poems

by Mark Cox

Overview

Death haunts the pages of Natural Causes, but so does compassion and love. There is little darkness here, and less despair, despite the abundance of cemeteries, loss, and ghosts—both real and imagined.



Mark Cox’s youthful bravado has given way in these poems to an assured sense of understatement. The weight of fatherhood, the loss of a grandmother, the fear of loneliness—these are the details around which Cox plumbs the depths of mortality and memory.



Fully comfortable with the domestic tableau from which he writes, this is a poet never complacent. The penchants for metaphor and the resonant turn of phrase that informed Cox’s earlier work remain as vibrant as ever, indeed are heightened, as he masterfully affirms and celebrates the range of familial complexity and human connectedness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822958390
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	04/18/2004
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Mark Cox, professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, has received many prominent honors and awards. He is the author of three previous books of poetry, including Thirty-Seven Years from the Stone.

Table of Contents

I.	Ashes, Ashes
	At the Stair	3
	Pail of Eggs	4
	Treasure	5
	Pompeii	7
	Odyssey	9
	Better Homes and Gardens	10
	The Museum of the End of the World	11
	Inner Rooms	13
	Red Lead, 1978	15
	Consolidated Freight	16
	Top Pay, Home Every Weekend	18
	Joyland	19
	Blind Cat at a Window	21
	Parakeet	22
	At the Crematorium, My Son Asks Why We're All Wearing Black	23
	Til Death Do You Part: Second Ceremony	24
	Willow Run	26
II.	7:30 Poems
	Eastern Wyoming	31
	Western Wyoming	32
	Wound	33
	Call to Prayer	34
	On Your Coast	35
	Image	36
	Want	37
	Well of Tragedy	38
	His Green Chair	39
	Norway	40
	Bread Loaf, 1991	41
	Pissing Off Robert Frost's Porch	42
	After Reading Tu Fu	43
	Whittling	44
	57th Street	45
	Second Skin	46
III.	Finish This
	The Sublime	49
	Finish This	51
	Dark Black	53
	This Bucket Has a Hole in It	55
	After the Sea Parts, My Daughter Walks among Gravestones	57
	Fatherhood	58
	Sill	60
	The Lion's Share	62
	Natural Causes	63
	On the Way to See You	64
	Rest Darling Sister Rest	66
	The White Doves of Topeka	68
	After Rain	69
	Ashes, Ashes	70
	Acknowledgments	71

Editorial Reviews

Unflinching and beautifully made, these poems seem cynical only at first glance—then perplexed and tender.

Leslie Ullman

There's a gravity and a sorrowful wisdom in Mark Cox's new poems that make the work of most of the other poets of his generation seem frivolous.

David Wojahn

These poems are well-crafted and for me, more importantly, well-dreamt. I felt ghosts of William Stafford and Rilke smiling as Cox chased his life through its convolutions. This is not a light romp. There are tombstones and heartache, lonely truckers and the achingly beautiful and transient natural world. . . .This is a book for those unafraid to do the work of living and remembering. It is well worth the sweat and the risk."

The Cafe Review

Vivid memory intertwines with a rigorously envisioned present and future. Cox has touched on these matters in earlier books, but not so consistently or wish such uncanny thematic force. He speaks across a huge range or subject and feeling, from layered fury to astringent violence to lamentation, from guarded hopefullness to affirmations at once quiet and stirring. It is, altogether, an astonishing and moving tour de force.

Tar River Poetry

This collection teems with rich images and rings with a vibrant voice.

Charlotte Observer

One of the best books I've read in years. In a style that's brash, offbeat, tough minded, and big hearted, these poems explore the fundamental mysteries of love between parent and child, self and other, self and world.

Alan Shapiro

Tender beyond belief, uncannily lyrical, morbid and funny and smart, Cox is a master poet of the mystery of presence.

Tony Hoagland

Had me hooked by the time I reached the fifth poem . . . salt-of-the-earth lyricism worth simmering over. Reading it felt like watching the morning mist hovering over my grandparents' backyard creek burn away.

PA) Express-Times (Easton

This collection teems with rich images and rings with a vibrant voice.”
—Charlotte Observer


“Vivid memory intertwines with a rigorously envisioned present and future.  Cox has touched on these matters in earlier books, but not so consistently or wish such uncanny thematic force.  He speaks across a huge range or subject and feeling, from layered fury to astringent violence to lamentation, from guarded hopefullness to affirmations at once quiet and stirring.  It is, altogether, an astonishing and moving tour de force.”
—Tar River Poetry

From the Publisher