| Edition |
1st ed. |
| Description |
xii, 144 pages ; 22 cm |
| Contents |
I East Boston, 1996 -- II Beginning again -- Two -- Transformation -- Progress -- From the past -- Visiting -- Truth will set you free -- Emperor of Antarctica -- Did this ever happen to you -- Child playing -- Od hearing -- Alder Street -- Poem in two parts -- Woods Hole Ferry -- Sitting up late with my father, 1977 -- Publication date -- Four poems of youth -- Vow -- Genetics -- With the gift of a bracelet -- From a line by Reverdy -- Father Roger goes for a walk -- A word for joy -- Sons: March 2003 -- Hawk -- Heaven -- Reader -- III Everyone's elegy -- E.D. in coma -- Knowers -- Hell -- For Frank Stanford -- For Larry Levis -- For Donald Justice -- Arkansas first light -- Arkansas first snow -- Arkansas Good Friday -- Alone and talking funny -- Text and commentary -- Petition -- Rosary -- Lines written in the dark illegible next day -- On the death of a cat -- Fading -- Poem -- Dawn walks in blue and diamonds -- Paying -- Prescience -- Walk -- Kindness -- Scale -- A happy thought -- Living twice -- Delirium -- Introduction -- Fire -- Why is the Winter light -- Next home -- IV Love -- Five Octobers (On our Anniversary) -- Wake -- Beloved illusory -- Language my Country -- Example -- Nebraska blizzard -- Two poems -- Insane -- Who said that -- Preparations -- Poet's room in a museum -- Lesson -- Choice -- Wrong -- Month six -- To the sun, to the risen -- Doctrine -- Event horizon -- Stranger's study: Berlin -- Parting word -- Poem -- October -- Elegy: The boy -- Question -- Ohio Sunflowerfield -- A successful day (Fill in the blank) -- After -- Process -- Admission -- Under the lamp, out of the depths -- Scribbled testament -- I am listening. |
| Summary |
"In this luminous new collection of poems, Franz Wright expands on the spiritual joy he found in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Walking to Martha's Vineyard. Wright, whom we know as a poet of exquisite miniatures, opens God's Silence with "East Boston, 1996," a powerful long poem that looks back at the darker moments in the formation of his sensibility. He shares his private rules for bus riding ("No eye contact: the eyes of the terrified / terrify"), and recalls, among other experiences, his first encounter with a shotgun, as an eight-year-old boy ("In a clearing in the cornstalks ... it was suggested / that I fire / on that muttering family of crows"). Throughout this volume, Wright continues his penetrating study of his own and our collective soul. He reaches a new level of acceptance as he intones the paradox "I have heard God's silence like the sun," and marvels at our presumptions: We speak of Heaven who have not yet accomplished even this, the holiness of things precisely as they are, and never will! Though Wright often seeks forgiveness in these poems, his black wit and self-deprecation are reliably present, and he delights in reminding us that "literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry." But in this book, literature wins as well. God's Silence is a deeply felt celebration of what poetry (and its silences) can do for us."--Publisher's website. |
| Subject |
American poetry -- 20th century.
|
|
American poetry. (OCoLC)fst00807348
|
| Chronological Term |
1900-1999
|
| Other Form: |
Online version: Wright, Franz, 1953- God's silence. 1st ed. New York : A.A. Knopf, 2006 (OCoLC)607785218 |
| ISBN |
1400043514 |
|
9781400043514 |
|
9780375710810 (pbk.) |
|
0375710817 (pbk.) |
| Standard No. |
9781400043514 |
|
