num_pages: 96
description: Winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, Maurice Manning’s Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions  takes us on a wild ride through the life of a man child in the rural South. Presenting a cast of allegorical and symbolic, yet very real, characters, the poems have “authority, daring, [and] a language of color and sure movement,” says series judge W.S. Merwin.From Seven ChimerasThe way Booth makes a love story: same as a regular story, except under one rock is a trapdoor that leads to a room full of belly buttons;  each must be pushed, one is a landmine. The way Booth makes hope: thirty-seven acres, Black Damon, Red Dog. Construct a pillar of fire in the Great Field and let it become unquenchable. The way Booth ends the Jack-in-the-Box charade: shoot the weasel in the neck and toss it to the buzzards. The way Booth thinks of salvation: God holding a broken abacus, colored beads falling away.
language: English
title: Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions
titlecomplete: Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions
genres: Poetry
ratings_count: 340
series: Yale Series of Younger Poets
awards: awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition
publisher: Yale University Press