Download e-book for iPad: Figuring in the Figure: Poems by Ben Berman

In Ben Berman’s moment full-length assortment, Figuring within the determine, poems encumbered with aphorisms, puns, and witticisms meditate on shapes, angles, considering pondering, marriage, and the fun and trials of bringing a daughter into the area, between others. occasionally with a Frostian spirit, occasionally with a marginally of Zen, the recognized is puzzled and knowledge gleaned from day-by-day event. this can be a e-book that demanding situations us to reimagine the common, either actual and non secular, whereas reminding us to not “wander via this international with out wonder.”

PRAISE FOR FIGURING within the FIGURE:

“Because layout, on my own, doesn’t carry weight,/” Ben Berman writes in his extraordinary moment number of poems, “we desire concrete material-the picture/ of a bridge over the sound of water.” In Figuring within the determine, Berman explores the character of shape in its inner most most complicated feel. His luminous info evoke an international of mutable varieties and shapes that recommend the fragility of our lives. The publication culminates with a relocating, life like but lyrical series of poems in regards to the beginning of his daughter. this can be a quietly attractive booklet that merits realization and recognition.
-Jeff Friedman, writer of Pretenders

Figuring within the determine is a self-portrait of a guy turning into a father. Ben Berman writes inside of a transformed terza rima that makes a advantage out of readability and discernment. The effect right here of Frost returns us to Frost’s virtues: those poems make issues and feature some extent of view. Like Frost, Berman is unsparing in his introspection. He bargains us an ongoing philosophy: while confronted with the discomfort and contradiction of lifestyle, “to hold up judgment and consider . . . incompatible thoughts.”
-Rodger Kamenetz, writer of The Jew within the Lotus

Ben Berman’s nimble terza rima is the precise motor vehicle for the poems of Figuring within the determine. either expansive and dependent, the interwoven stanzas enable him to shape and reform probing questions of id with out ever leaving behind a deep musicality. We watch the speaker give some thought to mouse droppings, hit the wall in a marathon, describe the good molasses flood of 1919, diaper a doll in a birthing type, then try and deal with his “tiny fascist” of a baby who wouldn’t cease until eventually “every bookshelf toppled/ like a/ failed coup.” His observations are enriched with different types of humor-aphorisms, riddles, notice performs, and puns. This ebook is sensible and wonderful.
-Beth Ann Fennelly, Poet Laureate of Mississippi, writer of Unmentionables

Ben Berman’s fantastic, smart poems are by no means in basic terms shrewdpermanent. Their frisky formal play is ultimately and importantly in regards to the discovering of types that may accurately include our emotions. As his identify, Figuring within the determine, indicates, Berman is keen on double meanings; certainly, he's in love with the entire twists and turns of language, in addition to the entire buildings that demonstrate the pleasures of pondering. If invention is his inclination, order is his realized but sly significant other, “a partner,” he writes, “the sort/ that coyly invitations chaos to dance.”
-Lawrence Raab, writer of Mistaking one another for Ghosts

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ben Berman’s first publication, unusual Borderlands (Able Muse Press, 2013), gained the Peace Corps Award for top ebook of Poetry and was once a finalist for the Massachusetts publication Awards. He has got awards from the recent England Poetry membership and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Somerville Arts Council. he's the poetry editor at Solstice Literary journal and teaches within the Boston sector, the place he lives together with his spouse and daughters.