Human Love (Phoenix Poets) - Softcover

Gildroy, Doreen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226293300 ISBN 13: 9780226293301

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Prolusion

This is my kitchen.
I looked around.

You think I would have noticed before
that it was safe.

(I started to feel.)

What I wanted first
was color.

I intended terra cotta,
but the paint turned
twice as vibrant:
true orange.

(And then I became used to
boldness.)

Doreen Gildroy's second book of poems is a marvel of lyric exactitude. On the surface a book about a man and a woman trying to conceive a child, Human Love is more deeply an attempt to focus on the process of human creativity in general and, ultimately, the desire to remake the world and self so that both will be more hospitable to new life.

Here, the physical processes of modern fertility treatments become a means through which the self experiences the world with grace and love; the wished-for child also begets a new relationship between man and woman. Though dark at times, Human Love never surrenders hope, and Gildroy never lets the muted music of her verse succumb to despair. A meditation on the body as a source of joy, anxiety, and regeneration, this collection extends the capacity of the lyric to articulate human feeling while considering the complications of love, both human and divine, and the distinctions between them.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Doreen Gildroy is the author of The Little Field of Self, published by the University of Chicago Press, winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares magazine.

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human love

By DOREEN GILDROY

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2005 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-29330-1

Contents

Acknowledgments.............................................xiIProlusion...................................................3Human Love..................................................4Gallery of My Life..........................................6(My God, it took me ...)....................................8Unmitigated Hue.............................................9Vademecum...................................................11Tables and Chairs...........................................13II(Returning to my father's house ...)........................17Being Marked, Showing Symptoms..............................18Visitation..................................................20Reconnaissance..............................................22Visual Binary...............................................23Transit.....................................................25As Vitruvius to the Divine Intelligence.....................28Open to the Sky.............................................29Reprieve....................................................31Miniature...................................................33Luminaries..................................................34Fountain....................................................36IIIBonsai......................................................39Entry.......................................................41The Center of the Earth, Unseen.............................44Paints, Medicines...........................................45Diffusion...................................................48Artificial Paradises........................................49Clearstock..................................................53IVIn Illo Tempore.............................................57A Picture Like the Sun......................................61Imperfect Awe...............................................63Field Work..................................................65It Is the Beginning.........................................69Strange Flowers.............................................70Diagram of the Winds........................................72

Chapter One

Prolusion This is my kitchen. I looked around. You think I would have noticed before that it was safe. (I started to feel.) What I wanted first was color. I intended terra-cotta, but the paint turned twice as vibrant: true orange. (And then I became used to boldness.) Human Love When the child wouldn't come into existence what was I to do? I knew it in a different way, then. He said he had never heard these stories before we began, didn't care- but now in his grief they seemed everywhere. * * * I was missing you, and then the dove. Singly-not in a pair- in his usual place. I watched him on the garden wall, thought the absence of the other. Whatever the reason, I took it to remind me of myself and what I was missing. It flew up in the face of all my instinct, my raw animal comfort. * * * His was a tender embrace. There was nothing going on around it, no fury driving me on. In spite of the pain I was offering something. Some days this seems everything I understand. Gallery of My Life In the gallery I listen to a story. What the open space is for- always that small pressure. If I need to go to bed, is it illness, or mercy? I overheard a woman say, "It didn't matter that ..." * * * Outside, I watched the people talking. "He was always excited about everything. That's what was nice about him." Quiet in a chair, reading the ancient texts. I decided to try human guides. I wanted someone who says, This is a world, I like to see it. * * * A vital force. I decided not to talk about it anymore, but still pursue. Perhaps I will wake up further along, on another path completely. * * * For a long time I couldn't discard the papers, reading lists, classics vast and dense. Where had I been before? Far stronger, far brighter for me this indication, like a star. I must be a strange being by now. My God, it took me many years to get here. And then we began to speak. Exposing my sense of time as utterly limited. Because time is what's between us. I know nothing, not even Christ. I wish I had learned- so I'm starting now. Not human form- which to me, my heart, would not be recognizable. There was a place on earth that corresponded. I carried its vestiges- always carried your traces. Unmitigated Hue Oh wild, elegant landscape- everchanging hailstorm, light. What will be my book? the many books. Who will be my guide? * * * After so many years the absolute scared me. I remembered it, certainly- as if over me I felt the weight of it. * * * Sitting by the irrigation pond somewhere in Idaho, I grew weary of my myth of childhood. The list of names I read, of which I want to replace one with our child, an ancient name made vital. * * * Without signs (the usual) this naming was difficult. There's really nothing in the room. (I've cleaned everything out.) The air cool today. (Nothing left in the house.) I'd forgotten my powers. In the morning I could say anything. Vademecum We were going to go to the museum- looking, studying. It was just around the corner. But we decided to sit in Rita Flora in the balmy breeze and eat cake. The afternoon had all gone so slowly. I was happy with him- and felt it, continually. My soul is tired, I say. And why it comes out that way, I don't know. I could not figure it. Today, simply stopped requesting to know. We'll wander around and the day will go on- and so will I- and I'll reach for nothing that doesn't touch me, doesn't present itself inquisitive of me. Tables and Chairs I'm on the table again, and the new doctor probes. Tables and chairs, they are my residences. Heaven on earth? I keep a telescope in my closet. Where I place the stars? The birds eternal, catching us, calling their redirection. Ten o'clock-and I remember sitting in a room ... My brain's good to me, keeps things. Right place, perfect place, and ease. The eldress sits in the shaker chair. It is a life. Her life. Not ashamed to be as she is.

Chapter Two

Returning to my father's house- in a dream in my great disappointment I've come looking for him in chaos, in citizens' revolt roaming foreign streets, and the snow is everywhere. He's been dead almost ten years, and he's so happy...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0226293300
• ISBN 13: 9780226293301
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 84
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar