Threshold / Jennifer Richter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Richter, Jennifer, 1969-

Series:

Crab Orchard award series in poetry.

Crab Orchard Series in Poetry

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature.

American poetry.

Physical Description:

xii, 74 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Carbondale : Crab Orchard Review : Southern Illinois University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Jennifer Richter presents a series of poems that explore the many facets of the term "threshold." Throughout the collection, the narrator experiences several acts of threshing, or separating from birth and the small yet profound distances that part a mother and child, to the separation caused by illness and its toll on relationships. At the same time, she is progressively gathering, piecing together the remnants of her life, collecting her children into her arms, and welcoming a future without pain. Pain is often present in these poems, as the narrator frequently confronts her own threshold for enduring a ravaging illness. Her harrowing struggle through recovery is chronicled by a poem at the end of each section, tracing her powerful journey from deep suffering to a fragile yet steadfast sense of hope. These gripping lyric and prose poems explore duality in its many forms: the private, contemplative world versus a world of action; the mirror sides of health and sickness; the warmth of a June sun and the deep, long nights of winter; mother and child; collecting and letting go. From the comfort of a morning bed at home to the desperate streets of Hanoi, "Threshold" is a searing portrait of healing, the courage it takes to bridge the gulfs that divide, and the wonder of the ties that bind. What Is My Body Without You? My son s pajamas unsnapped on the floor: small husk of his body relaxing on its back, legs and sleeves still filled with his rush. This part of him hasn t outgrown my arms and sometimes lets me lift him up our steep stairs, carry him to bed and pull his shade against the gray thin winter sky like milk my daughter wakes up wanting. In the last days of lifting her to my breast, I fill her less than the air already gone from my son s flat shape. Twice like that I have lain back, the doctor opening me along the same clean seam. Each time I was watching: with a few tugs the child was out, naked and heading toward other hands, each child cut loose before I knew it. "

Contents:

Cover

Book Title

Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

1

Threshold:

Magic Word

Spring, and It Starts to Snow

Ask Yourself Whether You Are Having Children to Be Loved, or to Love

You Are Time to Wake Up

Today Is a Capital M

Recovery

2

Fairy Tale: The Doctor

Putting the Baby to Sleep: Nine Tries

Recovery 2: Turn Away Your Eyes and It'll Fly

3

Persephone Returns

Everywhere the Earth Is Opening

After the Mud Bath

Laying on Hands

Annunciation

Name One Thing You Love

Recovery 3

4

Kept from Her

For Chloe, Whose Name Means "Profusion of Blooms"

In the Air

The Fifth Element

First Words

Ode to the Bones

Prayer for the Hanoi Man Who Waits for Breakdowns on His Block

Recovery 4

5

The Damp Grass Catches You Wherever You Lie Down

Some Run

What Is My Body Without You?

They Name Each Other Jesus

Set a Place at Your Table for Grief

To Gather Back the Body

Recovery 5: Now What Do You Do?

6

You Were Born to Be Mine, See, Why Even Fight It

Relapse

Click

She Asks about Death, Then Draws

Brought to Life

The Day You Choose

"Give us the baby, give us the baby, throw us the baby"

Recovery 6: The Last Word

Notes

Other Books in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry

Back Cover.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

1-280-69679-6

9786613673756

0-8093-8567-8

OCLC:

649913247