This week’s Throwback Thursday selection is Peter Gizzi’s “Still Life with Automobile,” originally published in Periplum, and Other Poems. The poem is also found in Gizzi’s newest book In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems 1987-2011.

 

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Still Life with Automobile

He was going to take it to the next town.

Though the park was empty

the pond bristled with life. He had

not an answer within 100 sq. acres

or it was only answers that tweeted about.

Who was this lonely figure in a landscape

and once he is made known

would the narrative slack and come

to a warm bed and slippers?

It was no no and yes yes all afternoon

on the thruway. It was a big state said the signs

and so did the sky say big state.

 

Praise for In Defense of Nothing

“In Defense of Nothing neither apologizes nor explains, but in its circumnavigation the reader will be moved to find experiences of suffering, surprise, joy, and gratitude, experiences that define life itself.”
-Ange Mlinko, Boston Review

“A deep lacuna has opened in the work, which makes the title In Defense of Nothing as much literal as rhetorical, opening a space for the next step in Gizzi’s trajectory.”
-Alan Gilbert, Hyperallergic

“These selected poems from five books are helpful in understanding the architectural gifts of Peter Gizzi—studying his extended productivity show us the overall force of his work.”
-Grace Cavalieri, The Washington Independent Review of Books

“As a whole, Gizzi’s In Defense of Nothing affirms the notion that poetry is a form of salvation for those who are willing to do the hard work of turning perceptions into the ‘second tongue we call grammar.’ It is a book worthy of all who love art and all who love to express themselves through poetry.”
-Sonja James, The Journal, Martinsburg, WV

“Gizzi’s poetry is ‘silly with clarity,’ infused with a restless vernacular that can elevate the mundane while making the impossible tangible.”
–Publisher’s Weekly

“In Defense of Nothing Selected Poems 1987-2011 splendidly champions Gizzi as a major force in the ever-expanding vastness of the poetry world. His well-earned spot as an integral influential force of our time is thus firmly staked out.”
-Patrick James Dunagan , Bookslut

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PETER GIZZI is the author of Threshold Songs, The Outernationale, Some Values of Landscape and Weather, Artificial Heart, Periplum, and In Defense of Nothing. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“Still Life with Automobile”  © 1992 Peter Gizzi, from In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987 – 2011