Shadow architect / Emily Warn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Warn, Emily.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hebrew language--Alphabet--Poetry.

Hebrew language.

Hebrew language--Alphabet.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

xiii, 139 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Port Townsend, Wash. : Copper Canyon Press, [2008]

Summary:

Mystics have long considered the Hebrew alphabet a key to divine intent, believing that God brought the world into being through speech. Shadow Architect is Emily Warn's midrash: her exploration of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet-the alef-beit-in which she considers the limits and generative power of language. She writes in her preface: "I studied the letters in the same way I study Zen koans: I absorbed their source texts and interpretations (Torah stories, psalms, poems, paintings, calligraphy), living with them until an experience or insight shattered their language and logic, revealing what they concealed."

Within the set boundaries of this alphabet, Warn unites her own distinctly American poetics with the language of sacred texts and commentaries. The result is an alluring, multilayered, and polyphonic investigation of what language means: an architecture not only of shadows, but of "correspondences, analogies, / binaries, metaphors, keys."

Contents:

The Yoke of Heaven

Alef: The Yoke of Heaven 5

Beit: The House of Musing 11

Gimel: The Master Gardener 17

Dalet: Threshold 23

Hei: Elijah's Babble 29

Vav: The Parched Seeds 35

Zayin: Jubilee 41

Chet: Hovering 47

Tet: How the Two Become One 53

The Soul's Chisel

Yud: The Hand of God 61

Kaf: Cantillations 67

Lamed: Ox-Herding Lesson 73

Mem: The Soul's Chisel 79

Nun: The Shadow Architect 85

Samech: The Perfect One 91

Ayin: Prime View 97

Pei: Ingathering of the Exiles 105

Tzadik: The Soul Repair Kit 113

Instruction for Lighting Fires

Kuf: Mnemonic 121

Reish: Genesis 125

Shin: Instruction for Lighting Fires 129

Tav: Prophecy 133.

ISBN:

9781556592775

1556592779

OCLC:

182529290