Table Of Contentpoetry
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—john ashbery susan wheeler is the
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“Part narrative, part satire, part cri de coeur, Susan Wheeler’s densely Bag ‘o’ Diamonds, which
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wrought new poems are alternately hilarious and chilling in their received the Norma Farber a
power to evoke the terrible contradictions of daily life in our media- First Book Award of the n
driven landscape. Wheeler is that rare thing among poets, a genuine Poetry Society of America
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cultural critic; her poems use image and allusion with such exacti- and was short-listed for the
tude that we see the things around us—from pop tarts to polyvinyl Los Angeles Times Book h z
toilet seats—as if for the fi rst time. LLLeeedddgggeeerrr iiss aa ddaazzzzlliinngg ccoolllleeccttiioonn..”” Award; Smokes, which won e i
—marjorie perloff, author of The Vienna Paradox the Four Way Books Award in e r
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1998; and Source Codes. A
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“Susan Wheeler is an exuberant, subtle, endlessly inventive original, novel, Record Palace, will be r
and LLLeeedddgggeeerrr mmaarrkkss aa wwoonnddeerrffuull aaddvvaannccee iinn hheerr aallrreeaaddyy vviittaall ccoonnttrriibbuu-- published by Graywolf Press
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“If Baudelaire was, for Walter Benjamin, the lyric poet of the era of Review of Books, Verse, o
high capitalism, Susan Wheeler is a lyric poet for an era of super- Talisman, the New Yorker,
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stores, global corporations, and product tie-ins. Her poems draw on and many other journals. On
a wealth of sources—from seventeenth-century religious poetry the creative writing faculties
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and Flemish painting to contemporary consumerism—in an effort at Princeton University and
to defi ne our tenancy to rich lords and concurrent losses to the the New School’s graduate w
human heart.” program, she lives in Rocky
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—michael davidson, author of The Arcades and Guys Like Us: Hill, New Jersey.
Cuitningi vMeasrcusliintityy i no Cfol di Woawr Paoe tpicrsess ISBN 0-87745-927-4 i e i
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Iowa City, Iowa 52242 9 0 0 0 0 h
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Cover photo, Chinquapin, TN 1989, by Mike Smith
9 780877 459279
Ledger
iowa poetry prize
winner of the
Ledger
susan wh eeler
University of Iowa Press iowa city
University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 2005 by Susan Wheeler
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Richard Hendel
http://www.uiowa.edu/uiowapress
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any
form or by any means without permission in writing from
the publisher. All reasonable steps have been taken to
contact copyright holders of material used in this book. The
publisher would be pleased to make suitable arrangements
with any whom it has not been possible to reach. This is a
work of poetry; any resemblance to actual events
or persons is entirely coincidental.
The University of Iowa Press is a member of
Green Press Initiative and is committed to preserving
natural resources.
Printed on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wheeler, Susan, 1955–.
Ledger / by Susan Wheeler.
p. cm.—(Iowa poetry prize)
ISBN0-87745-927-4 (pbk.)
I. Title. II. Series.
PS3573.H43465L43 2005
811'.54—dc22 2004058021
05 06 07 08 09 P 5 4 3 2 1
for David
Having been a tenant long to a rich Lord,
Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,
And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancell th’ old.
—George Herbert, “Redemption”
They did not understand that even an economic world order
cannot be built on merely economic foundations.
—Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History
Contents
Loss Lieder, 1
proper return
, 3
That Been to Me My Lives
Light and Saviour, 5
Roanoke and Wampumpeag, 8
The Green Stamp Book, 9
Carnival, 10
Doubled Indemnity, 11
Each’s Cot an Altar Then, 12
short shrift, 17 money and god, 39
surfeit, 29 depleted stocks, 51
Hand, Mouth, Market, 31 Figures on a Kylix Attributed to Douris,
Good Goods, 33 Athens, 490–480 b.c., 53
Charity Must Abide Call for Trade, 54
Ancient Occupation, 34 Barry Lyndon in Spring Lake, 1985, 56
Anthem, 36 Song of the Deserving, 58
Romanticism, 37 Port in the Airport, 59
Toward Autumn, 60
Overtaxed Lament, 61
the debtor in the convex mirror
, 63
Acknowledgments, 81
Ledger
