Salvaged Maxims is a book teeming with poetic curiosities. Naton Leslie finds the maxims contained in a centuries-old book the occasion for all manner of meditation on contemporary subjects, and the result--rendered in his smooth, elegant cadences--is by turns dark, humorous, and always haunting.
Praise for Salvaged Maxims
"Nate Leslie calls the poetry of this book 'salvage work,' and so it is; and what it salvages is as wide-ranging as it is important. Employing a craggy sort of diction and thinking, the poems explore some 'found' language for its purchase and leverage on both eternal and immediate human concerns. And in the journeys these poems make, there is much learning, much recall from history's capacious pouch, both to extend and to deepen the moments we recognize there."--Wayne Dodd
"I admire the way Naton Leslie has taken a collection of antique maxims
and both broken and broken them open-each one becomes a memory at its precise
moment of revelation. These poems are highly polished: thougtful and rich. As
with all philosophy, they yearn to know more than is possible, but they forgive
themselves over and over in the sheer pleasure of salvaging and skillfully arranging
what is possible for us to know."--Fleda Brown
Naton Leslie is the author of two other volumes of poetry: Moving to Find Work (Bottom Dog Press, 2000) and Their Shadows Are Dark Daughters (Pavement Saw Press, 1998) and a collection of short stories, Marconi's Dream and Other Stories (Texas Review Press, forthcoming), winner of the George Garrett Fiction Prize. In 2000 he was awarded a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts through the Saratoga County Arts Council, and in 1993 he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for poetry.
$16.00, 112 pages, ISBN: 0-9708667-9-8
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