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Names of the Rapids

...pandemonium, ugly rumors,
vagrant clouds loitering at loose ends.
It's a schizophrenic air.
                             From —Tornado Symptoms

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This book was the winner of the 1985 (the 11th recipient) of the Juniper Prize, which is presented annually by the University of Massachusetts Press for a volume of original poetry.  The prize is named in honor of Robert Francis, who has lived for many years at Fort Juniper, Amherst, Massachusetts

"With The Names of the Rapids, Jonathan Holden comes into his own as a poet.

"The essential world of Holden's three previous volumes has not changed, he continues the sensuous evocation of family and small-town life begun in 1972, with Design for a House.  He is still obsessed with fathering and baseball and cars, with the American landscape as a strange commingling of natural and human symbols.

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Once again he locates the real life, the life of the imagination, in the private past, which for this poet started back in New Jersey, the fifties, July nights... With Edward Hopper-like clarity, he offers in this new volume a subtle and inspiring portrait of American life.  What distinguishes this volume from Holden's earlier work and from most poetry now being written, is its amazing firmness, its sense of control.  We can be grateful for such a book." 

        Jay Parnini, Middlebury College

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