Royals

by Cedar Sigo

Overview

"One finishes a poem feeling as though they have taken part in a singular event that can be returned and mined again and again without exhausting the kernel of mystery around which each poem swirls." — BOMB

Cedar Sigo's fourth collection restlessly enacts the pleasures of writing. With a mix of condensed, syllabic poems and longer serial pieces, and with many poems addressed to other poets, Sigo explores the romance of being a poet while also drawing on the color and symmetries of the visual arts of his Native American identity.

twin angels
at the impasse
stripping wire
• ut from
the earth

bolts of thunder pealed
from under the
falls

stones
thrown (from very high)
to form
a ziggurat
an hourglass
I almost forgot
to intone

Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest and studied at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the author of eight books and pamphlets of poetry, including Royals, Language Arts, Stranger in Town, Expensive Magic , and two editions of Selected Writings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781940696522
Publisher:	Wave Books
Publication date:	09/05/2017
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 9.70(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest and studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the author of eight books and pamphlets of poetry, including  Language Arts  (Wave Books, 2014),  Stranger in Town ( City Lights, 2010),  Expensive Magic  (House Press, 2008), and two editions of  Selected Writings  (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2003 and 2005). He is also the editor of  There You Are , a collection of interviews with Joanne Kyger (Wave Books, 2017). He has taught workshops at St. Mary’s College, Naropa University, and University Press Books. He lives in San Francisco

Table of Contents

Green Rainbow Song
Tomorrow Night
Suspended Sentence
Sensation
On Strings of Blue
THRONES
Gauntlet
After the Oracle
The Vision
Medallion
Like Stride
Whims
Ode for Nine Voices
Mornings in Mexico
Guns of the Trees
Photographing Theatre
Fever Dream
The Magic Mountain
Incision
Our Lives
Blue Moon
A Passage
The Wigwam
A Handbook of Poetic Forms
Panavision
Poems for Saints
Satin Glass
The Real Contents of a Street Poet’s Suitcase
Side Trips
Watching William Castle Writing
Setting Out Late
Portrait in Black
Smoke Flowers
Three Landscapes
Aquarelle
Crescent

Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

10/15/2017
Raised on the Suquamish reservation in Washington state and awarded a scholarship to study at the Naropa Institute, Sigo (Language Arts) addresses the pleasures of writing as well as his poetic muses/mentors in his latest collection. Poets, the royals of the title, "are the finest/ undervalued/ jewelers, urchins/ of mascara smeared/ trunk songs/ tapped slowly/ into my skull." Some of the poems here are built of loose phrases and snippets, others are written as catalogue verse (i.e., in list form), and still others are organized into more traditional lines and stanzas. Images move and change like colored slides: blue grass and brushfire, tanzanite teacups, "romancing/ the edge/ of an echo." VERDICT These are not easy poems to untangle, and some readers will need to work to find their way through them. Yet it's worth the delight of what is found—the shifting surprises, the play of language and line: "We are shrinking stars/ in relation to the altar/ Push your hand/ through the holes/ a giant violet bank of clouds/ The edge on the moon speaks/ all the way around."—Karla Huston, Appleton, WI

Library Journal

07/17/2017
Sigo (Language Arts) thinks deeply about what art can actually do in the aesthetically and lyrically exhilarating poems of his fourth collection. He writes to and for both friends and myriad artistic inspirations; each piece is spoken by “a working writer, nursing the pools in everyone’s hearts.” Sigo tinkers with an array of forms; while his prose poems adhere to rigid parameters, for instance, others in verse slither snakelike down the page, pulling the reader into unexpected territory. The latter type could fly past if it weren’t for the moments when Sigo deliberately slows the reader down to follow the turns of his line and become aware of the precision: “I cut the small/ black shadow/ of a jet and/ am moving it about/ the sky/ in the postcard.” In this collection, artists are perpetually deep in their work: “The poets in glowing lab coats” experimenting with various processes to discover “the deepest impression, a line torn from its plush root.” Sigo is generous with his homages and demonstrates a deep awareness of lineage that results in a book rich in references, consistently reminding readers of art’s wild entanglements: “We have to talk in every room to solve the dream house.” (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly