Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.

Temporarily Out of Stock Online
Overview
“. . .the poems [in Mezzanines] have doors that open and invite you inside. The rooms of the house may be odd, and the stairwells may lead in strange directions, but you, as the reader, remain beckoned. [Olzmann] hasn’t invited you in just to leave you. He’s got stories to tell, and they’re good.” The Huffington Post Blog
There is no place Matthew Olzmann doesn’t visit in his poignant debut. From underwater to outer space, Mezzanines is a contained universe, constantly shifting through multiple perceptions of the surreal and the real. A lyrical conversation with mortality, Olzmann explores identity, faith, and our sense of place, with an acute awareness of our minute existence.
From "NASA Video Transmission Picked Up By Baby Monitor":
How many shadows are there left to name?
Logophobia is the fear of words. Keraunothnetophobia
is the fear of falling man-made satellites.
Imagine this last one:
you walk outside and look to heaven
expecting a sky lab plunging down on youwires
everywhere, bolts loosening, metal body in flames.
Instead, you see only blue, endless blue,
the color of a baby’s new blanket, cloaking everything.
Matthew Olzmann is a graduate of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Inch, Gulf Coast, Rattle, and elsewhere. He’s received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kresge Arts Foundation. Currently, he is a writer-in-residence for the InsideOut Literary Arts Project and the poetry editor of The Collagist.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781882295982 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Alice James Books |
Publication date: | 04/16/2013 |
Pages: | 80 |
Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.10(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
NASA Video Transmission Picked Up by Baby Monitor 1
Hello Earth, 2
The Tiny Men in the Horse's Mouth 3
Spock as a Metaphor for the Construction of Race During My Childhood 5
Planetarium with Deformed Elephants 7
Bigfoot and the Placebo Effect 8
Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes 9
The Hand That Taps the Names into Gravestones 11
93,000,000 Miles from the Sun 12
The Melting Pot in Housewares Has a Slight Crack 13
Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem 15
Was Blind, But Now 16
Torque 17
Art of the Mime: An Educational Camp for Children 18
Snake Charming 19
The Rug 20
The Witness Garden 21
Alternate Sources of Fuel 22
Notes Regarding Happiness 23
Sir Isaac Newton's First Law of Motion 26
Revisions 27
The Man Who Looks Lost as He Stands in the Sympathy Card Section of Hallmark 28
The Antiquary 29
Dead Beetles Stuffed with Cocaine 30
The Days 31
Man Robs Liquor Store, Leaves Résumé 32
How Much 33
While Scratching My Wife's Back, I Calculate the Distance Between Sky and Earth 34
Rabbits 35
When He Weighs Only His Right Foot 37
Gas Station on Second Street, Detroit 38
Photograph of a Bay and a Dead Dog 39
A River, Briefly Parallel to an Eight-Lane Super Highway 40
Small Resurrection 41
Previous Theories on the Body 42
Protocol of Angels 44
For a Recently Discovered Shipwreck at the Bottom of Lake Michigan 45
Breathing Water 48
The Love Story 49
Years Later, I Introduce My Brother to Person X, and Am Asked If I Was Adopted 50
To the One at the Bottom of Loch Ness 52
Names of Actual Places You'll Pass on Your Way to Building a New Life 53
Crocodiles 54
Rare Architecture 56
The Size of the Earth and That Which It Contains 58