This site's design is only visible in a graphical browser that supports web standards, but its content is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
The Green Tuxedo
"Janet Holmes's second book of
poems explores and interrogates the quotidian life of
the late twentieth century for what exists behind its
often seductive appearance. In these poems we see
beneath acceptable, sleek surfaces into the turbulence
they often conceal, as the splendid green tuxedo of the
title may disguise a heart that harbors racism, fear,
and violence. Holmes exhorts us to look beyond the face
value of what presents itself, to resist literal
interpretations, and to plumb the many depths afforded
by each encounter with the world outside ourselves.
"In
the second half of The Green Tuxedo, Holmes
draws on recently discovered diaries kept by her
journalist father nearly fifty years before her birth.
Sifting through evidence and memory, she entwines actual
diary entries (such as a seventy-seven-name list of
„Wild Women I Have Known') with speculation and
invention to generate a portrait that discovers
him—re-invents him—as a young man. This sequence,
searching and elegaic, affords closure to a book whose
questionings suggest less a need for absolute answers
than a declaration of the need to explore. Holmes leads
us through a world of appearances, celebrating the
necessary examination of what is concealed."
—from the
University of Notre Dame Press catalogue
University of Notre Dame Press, 1998.
ISBN 0-268-01036-6. $12.00 paperback. 72 pages.
Order
The Green Tuxedo from Amazon.com!
Read poems from The Green Tuxedo:
"Against
the Literal"
"The
Blue World"
Read reviews
and comments on The Green Tuxedo
Back to top
