The Apple in the Monkey Tree

By Rich Murphy

Subjects: Poetry
Imprint: Distribution Partners
Paperback : 9781930337374, 78 pages, August 2010

Table of contents

The Monkey
Monkey in the Apple Tree
Lice-Eater
Pearl Two
Great Grandfather is a Baboon
The Fiction of Science
A Peck of Peace
Prometheus and the Chimpanzee
The Blanket
Odyssey
A Period Please
Shuffle Off with Buffalo
An Adult’s Solstice Solace
Thank God for the Wake Up Call
Tectonics: From China to Pyrex
Monk See Monk Do
The Apple in the Monkey Tree
Genesis

Genesis
The Pi Eating Contest
Kindling
Forceps Two-Step
Bog Gob
Universal Computations
Ladies and Gentlemen
The Autopsy
Man’s Gravitational Pull
Thick Description
Table Manners
The Cosmogonic Cyclist’s Itinerary
Weather or Knots
Science 1492
The Nature of Things Now
Genesis Today
The Apple

The Thief’s Trail
Stitches in Time
An Understanding
The Orbit
Playing with Matches
No Wonder
Poetic Justice
Cosmos Under Glass
Earth in Captivity
The Hunchback Rhythm
Clocksville
Under Ritual’s Sickle Moon
The Office Supply
Hearth Image
Tool Box
Assimilating Astronomers
Jackknife
The Tree

Tree of Consciousness
Crucifixion Currency
Cross-Wise
The Candle in Sunlight
Immaculate Conception: Song
Bonobo, the Class Clown
Sky
The Petrifying Situation
A Nursery Rhyme
Progression 1
Vaudeville Contagion
These Are Amazing
Circus Act
Singing the Blurs
The Last Kepler
The Cloth of Mythology’s Breath
In Time?
The Monkey Tree

Description

"Mr. Murphy is a very carful craftsman in his work, a patient and testing intelligence, one of those writers who knows precisely what he wants his style to achieve. His poetry is quite but packed, carefully wrought, not surrealistically wild, and its range not limited but deliberately narrow. It takes aim. " –Derek Walcott

"Among my favorite poems in Rich Murphy's The Apple in the Monkey Tree, 'Monk See Monk Do,' 'Forceps Two Step,' 'Table Manner,' 'Weather or Knots,' 'Science 1492,' 'The Nature of Things Now,' 'Genesis. ' I could go on listing. The apple and the monkey are carried throughout the collection but are presented in a fresh way each time they appear. The satire—the exposure of the reality of human existence and human nature, very Swift-like, yet different in execution—less gritty than Swift's poetry. Nicely done. " –Something Gloss, Freelance Editor

"If 'we distract the angels from the soft/ behind of our biology for the rough/ terrain of history,' we connect human beings to the fuller spirit of the mountain and ocean. After all, the earth is prior to mankind. We exist for it. Nature doesn't exist only for human use. These poems ask questions about human relevance. If a poet can answer, in part, the question, What are the reasons for history? –then his book is worth of our attention" –Sean Farragher, Poetry Editor, FRiGG Magazine