Flaming Tail Out of the Ground Near Your Farm

by Janet Gray

Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[juch]

i really liked this random book that i got for free from my professor's stash when she retired. the poems were small and dynamic, talky/lyric/confessional but surprising + rarely overdone, reminded me of rae armantrout with a stronger “I.” you can imagine them being written by a woman typing alone at night after a day of farm work, war in the distance. i loooved the missile prose poem, makes me wanna try something like that

i loved the ending to the poem "i've spent the day alone":

"Here is a list
of types of flowers:
neutral, fine, and disparate;
stable and accurate—

fossil-like and lizard-tail-like
(in that it detaches
from the Living Creature
when roughly handled.)"

[Dawne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went to graduate school with Janet Gray, and she was funny and brilliant in the twisted ways I admired. So is this book of her poems, and it is also gorgeous, captivating, eerie as an ornate broken mirror. I asked her once how to be more playful in my own poetry, which I wrote a lot of then. "Repetition," she answered, and ever after I have thought of poets as akin to jazz drummers. Read the music. Hear the rhythm. Improvise.