LIGHT-UP SWAN by Tom Snarsky

SKU: 978-1-942723-09-7
$17.00
$17.00
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published May 2021 

perfect bound trade paperback

9 x 6 inches, 93 pages 

ISBN 978-1-942723-09-7


Light-Up Swan has a QR link to a special bonus track of brand new poems Tom promises to change up now and then—look for the secret swan signal on this twitter page: 

https://twitter.com/lightupswan


Press Release:

light-up_swan_downloadable_press_release.pdf


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All art constantly aspires, Walter Pater claimed, towards the condition of music. The poems in Tom Snarsky’s first full-length collection Light-Up Swan are animated by twin forces: an abiding love of music, and an equal fondness for the ghostly conversation engendered by quotation. With whimsy tempered by obsessive fascination, the author unfolds an open dialogue with a private pantheon of musicians and poets, both living and dead. These spectral encounters are staged on a far-reaching array of settings, from oceans to virtual gamescapes, starry canvases to comedy clubs. The speaker of the poems is by turns assured and uncertain: in one moment explaining a mathematical result from automata theory, and in the next returning to youthful conflicts and preoccupations. Are we going in circles is a fair question for this cyclical book that wears its obsessions and anxieties on its sleeve, but Light-Up Swan moves towards a helical lift. Like a string of soft lights winding up a swan’s neck, these poems are composed of gentle details that welcome readers into a charmingly off-kilter world—once inside, their curiosity will be rewarded by a warm and unusual sensibility that only Tom Snarsky can bring.
Tom talks about the making of Light-Up Swan in this Kenyon Review feature by Ruben Quesada:
Poetry Today: Chloe Yelena Miller and Tom Snarsky
Praise for Light-Up Swan
"Tom Snarsky’s debut full-length poetry collection is a book on love and joy and gratitude and curiosity and an endless dance that blends them all. I feel like this book is speaking to hundreds of voices, living and dead. A community. A town. An inspired and inspiring read."

​--Ben Niespodziany, from "Favorite Authors (and Their Books) that I Read in 2021," [neonpajamas]
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