Grains of the Voice (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780810152281)

Christina Pugh's Grains of the Voice exhibits a pervasive fascination with sound in all its manifestations. The hu­man voice, musical instruments, the sounds produced by the natural and man-made worlds--all serve at one time or another as both the framework of poems and the occa­sion for their lightning-quick changes of direction, of tone, of point of reference. The poems are eclectic in their al­lusiveness, filled with echoes--and sometimes the words themselves--of other poets, but just as often of songs both popular and obscure, of the noise of pop culture, and of philosophers' writings. But Pugh always wears her learn­ing lightly. Beneath the jewellike surfaces of her poems is a strenuous investigation of the nature of and need for communication and a celebration of the endless variety of its forms.