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Light, Love and Loss in One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes
Posted 11/06/2009
MADISON, Wis. –The poems created by James Crews in One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes revolve around the life and work of artist Felix 
Gonzalez-Torres and the loss of his lover Ross, from AIDS. The poems underlying theme is love and loss. “Tonight was your last wish. / I used a teaspoon to scoop you / into each of the yellow envelopes / you chose and addressed to our friends.” Light is a predominate theme showing up in almost every poem and providing a redemptive force. “There she was, a revelation: / body ablaze in the orange gown, / bathed in celestial light from behind”.
James Crews holds an MFA in Poetry Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2006, Columbia, Crab Orchard Review, Court Green, basalt, and other journals. Last year his manuscript, Bending the Knot, won the 2008 Gertrude Press Chapbook Prize. He was the 2009 recipient of the Bernice Slote Award for Emerging Writers from Prairie Schooner. He has most recently taught literature and writing at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, Oregon.
Parallel Press is an imprint of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries. For more information, please visit http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry/.
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
A selection for his chapbook, One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes:
(City of Gold, City of Salt)
Finally, a man I was willing
to follow down these streets, still slick
with last night’s possibility as we came
to the flaking sign—Salt Depot—
where Ross opened the rusted gate,
pointed up at the mountains
and mountains of salt New York stores
for winter. First light caught
on them until they all shone
like the lost city of gold
Coronado spent half his life trying
to find. We climbed one of the mounds,
looked out across this city. Falling
down, we lay on gold, on flawless salt.
