FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 15, 2003 #160
Contact: Michelle Hopkins
(816) 235-1592*
hopkinsml@umkc.edu
 

BkMk Press to Publish David Rigsbee's The Dissolving Island

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- In November, BkMk Press at the University of Missouri-Kansas City will publish The Dissolving Island, David Rigsbee's fifth collection of poems ($12.95 trade paper, 69 pp., ISBN 1-886157-43-X). It is his most clear-eyed, richly open volume to date.

The Dissolving Island collects poems written over 15 years. The book is Rigsbee's most forceful achievement of using elegies and love poems, narrative, nature lyrics, and the dramatic monologue to take up themes of art, nature, and death, not in grandiose proportions, but in the small details of a man's life.

There is the resounding slap of a newspaper on a porch, a dying possum that refuses to play dead, and the spread of cancer "like rain on a carpet." Throughout, there is an inevitable "melting of the beaches" as in the title poem, which finds its center in the sucking sound of a man's carefully constructed island "slid(ing) back into the sea."

Poet and former Southern Review editor Dave Smith calls The Dissolving Island "the work of a raconteur of the spirit." He adds that, "Rigsbee is elegiac, disciplined, rapturous and suspicious, but more than that, these are poems of a remarkable, felicitous intelligence." Previously praised for their combination of emotional candor and concision, Rigsbee's poems are, in the words of the Virginia Quarterly Review, "highly intelligent, accessible and memorable."

Rigsbee was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins University, Hollins College, and the University of Virginia. He currently is professor of English and chair of the Department of Language and Literature at Mount Olive College in Mount Olive, North Carolina. His awards include fellowships and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, Virginia Commission on the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, and the Academy of American Poets. He is the author of nine books, including a critical look at the poetry of James Brodsky, entitled Styles of Ruin: Joseph Brodsky and the Postmodernist Elegy. His most recent book, Invited Guest: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Southern Poetry (co-edited with Steven Ford Brown), was selected by the American Library Association as one of the "Best of the Best" university press books of 2001. Rigsbee's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, The Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner and many other journals.

BkMk Press was founded in 1971 and became a part of UMKC in 1983. The press publishes fine literature by contemporary authors. Financial assistance for BkMk Press is provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, by UMKC, and by private donations. Media review copies of The Dissolving Island may be requested by calling 816-235-2558.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City, established in 1963, has the following strategic goals: In 2006: We are a national leader in scholarship and creative activity; We attract, nurture, and develop responsible community leaders; We are an essential community partner and resource; We are a workplace of choice; and We have the resources to fuel our vision.

* Individuals with speech or hearing impairments may call Relay Missouri at (800) 735-2966 (TT) or (800) 735-2466 (voice).

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