Placebo Effects: Poems (National Poetry Series Books) (National Poetry Series Books (Paperback))

Winner of the l996 National Poetry Series, judged and selected by William Matthews."This collection of beguiling poems . . . takes as its avenue into experience the palpable, quotidian objects of the intimate environment. A barometer, an arrangement of flowers, a vase, a carpet, a pyramid of oranges in a city marketplace are seen and then entered as one might enter the action of a film. . . . There is something of the child's wondrous way of seeing the world that electrifies." — __Boston Globe__ "Jeanne Beaumont's poems are smart and full of feeling, heartbreakingly in love with the snares and clarities of the language she writes in, and lit throughout by a kind of wry wonder." — William Matthews "How rare to discover so sly and disarming, so luminous and compelling a debut." — David St. John Winner of the l996 National Poetry Series, judged and selected by William Matthews. "This collection of beguiling poems . . . takes as its avenue into experience the palpable, quotidian objects of the intimate environment. A barometer, an arrangement of flowers, a vase, a carpet, a pyramid of oranges in a city marketplace are seen and then entered as one might enter the action of a film. . . . There is something of the child's wondrous way of seeing the world that electrifies." — Boston Globe "Jeanne Beaumont's poems are smart and full of feeling, heartbreakingly in love with the snares and clarities of the language she writes in, and lit throughout by a kind of wry wonder." — William Matthews "How rare to discover so sly and disarming, so luminous and compelling a debut." — David St. John Like the insomniac who roams through this lively collection's title piece, the poems of Placebo Effects are characterized by wakefulness and restlessness. Employing precise language they create a universe - one that is both idiosyncratic yet oddly familiar. Beaumont's poems move beyond observation and personal experience - thus every object is treated as artifact or talisman, and every memory takes part in history's process. Here, an eye test evokes the limits and wonders of divine and human vision; buying flowers begins a meditation on difference and kinship; a seemingly inert barometer becomes a keen tracker of both physical and social weathers. These are poems "woven to rove through time, dwelling to dwelling."