'Heart Starter is John Tranter’s twenty-fourth book of poems. It is made up of three parts: some poems related to The Best of the Best American Poetry 2013, some poems related to The Open Door: One Hundred Poems, One Hundred Years of ‘Poetry’ Magazine, and thirty or so poems, mainly rhymed sonnets, written by Tranter in recent years. In the case of the first two parts, the author started with loose drafts which borrowed the end-words of each line of some poems in each of the two books concerned. The poems engage in a typically oblique way with North American poetic culture, and with the world of poetry in general, and sometimes speak harshly about the nature of ‘poetic insight’. The formal poems towards the end of the book take a bleak and sometimes humorous look at the contemporary world.' (Publication summary)
Epigraph:
Much that is beautiful must be discarded
So that we may resemble a taller
Impression of ourselves.
–John Ashbery, 'Illustration'
