| Description |
70 pages ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 67-68). |
| Summary |
Mary Szybist restlessly seeks out places where meaning might take on new color. One poem is presented as a diagrammed sentence. Another is an abecedarium made of lines of dialogue spoken by girls overheard while assembling a puzzle. Several poems arrive as a series of Annunciations, while others purport to give an update on Mary, who must finish the dishes before she will open herself to God. One poem appears on the page as spokes radiating from a wheel, or as a sunburst, or as the cycle around which all times and all tenses are alive in this moment. Szybist's formal innovations are matched by her musical lines, by her poetry's insistence on singing as a lure toward the unknowable. Inside these poems is a deep yearning -- for love, motherhood, the will to see things as they are and to speak. |
| Contents |
The Troubadours Etc. -- Annunciation (from the grass beneath them) -- Conversion Figure -- Annunciation in Nabokov and Starr -- Heroine as She Turns to Face Me -- Update on Mary -- Hail -- Annunciation as Fender's Blue Butterfly with Kincaid's Lupine -- Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle -- Invitation -- Entrances and Exits -- It Is Pretty to Think -- Long after the Desert and Donkey -- To Gabriela at the Donkey Sanctuary -- Notes on a 39-Year-Old Body -- Annunciation under Erasure -- Close Reading -- So-and-So Descending from the Bridge -- I Send News: She Has Survived the Tumor after All -- Another True Story -- Annunciation in Byrd and Bush -- On a Spring Day in Baltimore, the Art Teacher Asks the Class to Draw Flowers -- Touch Gallery: Joan of Arc -- To the Dove within the Stone -- Holy -- How (Not) to Speak of God -- Yet Not Consumed -- On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes -- Annunciation in Play -- Too Many Pigeons to Count and One Dove -- The Cathars Etc. -- To You Again -- Annunciation: Eve to Ave -- Annunciation: Overheard from the Kitchen -- Night Shifts at the Group Home -- Happy Ideas -- Annunciation as Right Whale with Kelp Gulls -- Here, There Are Blueberries -- Do Not Desire Me, Imagine Me -- Insertion of Meadow with Flowers -- Knocking or Nothing -- The Lushness of It. |
| Subject |
Religious poetry, American.
|
|
Love poetry, American.
|
| Genre/Form |
Poetry.
|
| Added Title |
Poems. Selections
|
| ISBN |
9781555976354 (paperback) |
|
1555976352 (paperback) |
|
9781518217074 (Follettbound) |
|
1518217079 (Follettbound) |
|
