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NO SECOND EDEN
NO SECOND EDEN
POEMS
TURNER CASSITY
SWALLOW PRESS / OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2002 by Turner Cassity
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved
Swallow Press/Ohio University Press
books are printed on acid-free paper
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Initial appearances of some of these poems were in the following periodicals: Poetry: “The Metrist at the Operetta,” “The Dueling Scar,” “Manual vs. White Collar,” “Why Geriatrics Are Not Sacrificed,” “Watching the Stopwatch Stopping”; Georgia Review: “Stylization and Its Failures”; The Formalist: “Distant Early Warning”; Chattahoochee Review: “Oysters and Other Workers”; Lullwater Review: “Neckties”; Chicago Review: “Crime and Punishment”; Drastic Measures: “Boxcar Arthur and Other Myth,” “Boxcar Arthur, the Sequel”; Edge City Review: “Enola Gay Rights”; Southwest Review: “Venerations”; The Review (London): “Victory”; American Poetry Monthly: “Aurora Borealis of the Inner Eye,” “Sonar Readings.”
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cassity, Turner.
No second Eden : poems / Turner Cassity.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8040-1050-1 (acid-free paper) — ISBN 0-8040-1051-x (pbk. : acid-free paper)
I. Title.
PS3553.A8 N6 2002
811'.54—dc21
2002066918
IN MEMORY OF DOROTHY TURNER CASSITY 1903–1999
Self-knowledge speaks ill for people; it shows they are what they are, almost on purpose.
—I. Compton-Burnett,
Parents and Children
Contents
Aurora Borealis of the Inner Eye
Karl and Julius and Gregory, or, Are You a Fructidor?
Let My People Go, but not without Severance Pay
In the Matter of Graven Images
Sensitivity Training: The Safecracker
