Oberlin College Press

Jon Loomis

THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

Paper $14.95 (ISBN 0-932440-90-8)

Jon Loomis's new collection of poems visits big subjects by way of the commonplace. While The Pleasure Principle is full of surprises, both narrative and metaphorical, it is more than anything a humane and thoughtful exploration of the human condition: passion, mortality, cross-dressing, time, tourism, art, the shifty nature of reality, and, always considered in Loomis's work, the unknowable absolute.

"Jon Loomis's poems veer deftly and ironically between the sacramental and the sordid, with a wonderful economy of expression and sinuousness of line."
--Chicago Review

Jon Loomis is also the author of Vanitas Motel.

THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

We are failed agnostics, so many moments
of conviction. Even this midwestern
sunrise moves us--Rothko strip of pink

above the Poultry Lab. All appetite,
all sweat and dander, what keeps us
from the neighbors' throats

(their garden gnomes, their damned
dog barking)? Maybe just this labial glow,
the way the lake ice mutters and booms...

It's early, cold out. These bodies
are nothing, wear them once
and throw them away--

but they're good nothing. Your warm neck,
small snore. Roomful of salmon light.
Night unzipping its sequined gown.

--Jon Loomis