Threat of Pleasure, Poems by Philip Memmer
Philip Memmer's poems are quiet in their attention to the details of everyday life, but underneath their placid surface is a restless intelligence that probes for the darker, hidden meanings behind our experience. Threat of Pleasure is both an elegant exploration of common life and the dangers that lurk beneath.
"There's such a calm intelligence and wit to Philip Memmer's poems, and such a capacious imagination at work. No poet is better at teasing out the bittersweet complexities of our daily lives, their heartbreaking juxtapositions of the tender and the lethal, of innocence and menace: who else could use 'sports cars named / for birds of prey' to end a poem so well? And no poet is more quietly audacious in his negative capability, able to write inventive poems in the voice of 'The Cubist's Wife' or the Jesus-cursed fig tree in Mark's gospel or 'The Paleontologist's Blind Date.' Threat of Pleasure is a lucid, haunting, deeply gratifying book."–Michael McFee
Philip Memmer's previous collections of poems include the book Sweetheart, Baby, Darling (Word Press, 2004) and three chapbooks, Greatest Hits (Pudding House Publications, 2007), For Resident (FootHills Publishing, 2002) and The Apartment (Piccadilly Press, 2001). His poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Tar River Poetry and Mid-American Review, and in several anthologies, including 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, edited by Billy Collins. He is Director of the Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse, and founder of the Downtown Writer's Center, the Syracuse affiliate of the YMCA National Writer's Voice. He lives in the village of Deansboro, New York, with his wife, Michelle, and their children, Henry and Delia.
ISBN: 978-1934999172, 84 pages, $18.00