To embroider the ground with prayer : poems / by Teresa J. Scollon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scollon, Teresa J., 1962-

Series:

Made in Michigan writers series.

Made in Michigan writers series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--20th century.

American poetry.

Scollon, Teresa J., 1962-.

Scollon, Teresa J.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (102 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Detroit : Wayne State University Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A beautiful meditation on grief, memory, and the seasons of life. To Embroider the Ground with Prayer is a portrait of poet Teresa J. Scollon's several worlds, as she accompanies her father through his illness and death and records the richness of family and community life in her Michigan town. These poems enjoy reverence and irreverence in equal measure as grief appears side by side with playfulness and humor. Scollon employs a wide range of poetic styles and voices: elegies, narratives, and persona poems are organized in recursive circles that evoke family, village, local characters, and the author's adult life beyond her hometown. The collection begins with personal history and is rooted in a regional voice and focus, but Scollon skillfully transforms her experiences into larger concerns that resonate deeply and universally. Readers will get to know Scollon's father, in fragile health but still so vital to those around him; trace Scollon's many paths into and out of grief; and follow her travels as she confronts the pull of memory and once again forges her way in the external world. Throughout, Scollon records her understanding with fidelity, clarity, and reverence for story, and finds beauty in small everyday acts of devotion, patience, and humility. As Scollon writes, "To capture story is one way of giving thanks, of paying attention, to know where we are." Although this is her first full-length collection, Scollon's stirring work is situated in the tradition of American poetry that includes the likes of Ruth Stone, Wendell Berry, Ted Kooser, James Wright, Carl Sandberg, and Edgar Lee Masters. Readers interested in contemporary poetry will be grateful for this profound collection.

Contents:

Cover

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

The Invitation

Drought Year

Mid-Life, I'm Lost

Reciprocity

Autobiography: Falling

Family Music

The Yoga Master at the Party

Catechism

July Fourth

Friday Nights the Whole Town Goes to the Basketball Game

John's a Teacher

Doc Tells a Story on Horse Piss Wilson

Goodbye to Dwight Lipke

Death and the Photocopier

Exile

Grief in the Morning

Conference Room in Bloomington, Minnesota

The Old Horse

Pigeon Lady

New Year's Day, Winslow Beach, Maine

A Meeting with the Game Wardens

Summer Solstice in Black River Falls

Little Boat

How My Mother Loves Flowers

Three A.M.: Prelude

What Opens

Untitled

Poem to My Brothers and Sisters

The View from Flight 616

The Moon

While I Stood in Obedient Line According to the Dictates of Another Round-Trip Ticket

Commerce

The-First-Bob-Ever Handles a Middle East Situation

Halloween at Gross's Meat Market

A Visit

The Last Cat

At the Crematory

The Widow Talks about Black Holes

Everything's In Motion

Mitchell's Story

Dad Hides His Shakiness by Telling a Story

Caesura

Dubrovnik

Nine

Words, Poems

Across the Tracks

The Garden.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

9780814336212

0814336213

OCLC:

778704196