Poetry. "Geography" is the first of three sections of BREAKING DOWN THE SURFACE OF THE WORLD, an extended poetic sequence. The haunting world of buried memory gives the poem epic dimension as the poet fuses cultural and historical forces with personal memory. Thus, a child's discovery of the power of a single word recapitulates the invention of writing in ancient civilizations. By enlarging individual experience, we affirm our sense of continuity with the significant past. BREAKING DOWN THE SURFACE OF THE WORLD weaves a narrative form with the meditative lyric and the fragmented visions of the Surrealists. At its core, it describes one person's struggle through pain and memory to reach spiritual transcendence.

Author City: Los Angeles, CA USA

Jack Grapes is an award-winning poet, playwright, actor, teacher, and the editor and publisher of ONTHEBUS, one of the top literary journals in the country. He has won several publishing grants and Fellowships in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts. He's also received nine Artist-in- Residence Grants from the California Arts Council to teach writing in various schools throughout Los Angeles. He is the author of 13 books of poetry, including TREES, COFFEE, AND THE EYES OF DEER, and BREAKING DOWN THE SURFACE OF THE WORLD. A spoken-word CD, Pretend, was recently issued by DePaul University. He is also author of a chapbook of poems and paintings titled AND THE RUNNING FORM, NAKED, BLAKE. His most recent publication is LUCKY FINDS, a boxed set of 50 cards that extend and parody the dynamic artistic productions of high-modernist poets such as Ezra Pound and Charles Olson.

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http://www.jackgrapes.com/