Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Poetry General

Ox

by (author) Christopher Patton

Publisher
Vehicule Press
Initial publish date
May 2007
Category
General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781550652239
    Publish Date
    May 2007
    List Price
    $16.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

The poems in Christopher Patton’s debut collection, Ox, are about seeing clearly, and also about relinquishing the need to see with specific intent. Through this tension they find their idiosyncratic magic. Like the twelfth-century Buddhist parable of the ox-herder, Ox begins with a search, and its open-ended journey—one full of sprawling, strange, syntactically complex, cantilevering byways—establishes the form of its religious and philosophical reach. Moving across lucently rendered North American landscapes, Patton catches a glimpse of his own spiritual setting, and in the process suggests a new direction, perhaps an entirely new scale, for Canadian nature poetry. Brimming with beautifully-controlled descriptions and startlingly precise word-play, Ox is an image of vulnerability before the world’s plenitude. It is an astonishing achievement.

About the author

Christopher Patton is a Canadian poet living in the United States, where he teaches courses on ecopoetics and visual poetry at Western Washington University. His asemic visual poetry has been shown at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Whatcom Museum. Patton’s books include Ox, whose first section won the Paris Review’s long poem prize, and Curious Masonry, an earlier volume of Old English translations. He blogs at theartofcompost.com.

 

Christopher Patton's profile page

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Christopher Patton's poetry:

"His work will become indispensable." —Times Literary Supplement

"A formal style reminiscent of Marianne Moore's syllabic verse.... The pleasure of reading Patton's language is so great that it's easy at first to miss the subtle spirituality of what he is doing." —poetryreviews.ca

Other titles by