{"title": "Tropical Green", "covers": [1668896], "key": "/works/OL8683950W", "authors": [{"type": {"key": "/type/author_role"}, "author": {"key": "/authors/OL2935262A"}}], "type": {"key": "/type/work"}, "subjects": ["Poetry (poetic works by one author)", "Poetry"], "description": {"type": "/type/text", "value": "\"Chip Dameron's Tropical Green is rich with images of the South Texas coastal regions. \"Buzzards\" is a hilarious poem that links car engines (\"Gas and sparking, pistons, compression\"), buzzards, and student aversion to poetry; \"Cicadas\" is equally funny although in a quieter way, comparing the \"insect mantra\" to \"a six-legged Buddha, sitting in his tree / with his 17-year smile and thousands of incarnations.\" Never pretentious or contrived, Dameron's lines are crisp and insightful: \"All the Young Swans\" describes the \"bloody toeboxes\" of young ballet dancers who \"floated to applause / across a lake of illusion.\" There is wisdom in these poems: \"Instructing My Son\" shows a father's awareness that his son has \"stopped [listening to him] fifty yards ago,\" that the boy is moving, \"stride for stride, / to the sound of his own breathing.\" Dameron's endings are particularly strong, often coming as a sharp surprise and causing the poem to reverberate with sudden metaphoric force, \"sweet against the bone\" and giving \"new daylight / the shadow that it needed\"--Publisher's website."}, "latest_revision": 5, "revision": 5, "created": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2009-12-10T23:07:57.514730"}, "last_modified": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2025-05-04T08:41:06.920922"}}