The painted clock : and other poems / Stephen Bluestone.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bluestone, Stephen, author.

Standardized Title:

Poems. Selections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--20th century.

American poetry.

American poetry--21st century.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

71 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Macon, Georgia : Mercer University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Many voices, including perhaps that of God, can be heard in the title poem of Stephen Bluestone's The Painted Clock, a dramatic meditation on the journey to Treblinka, the death camp itself, and the ultimate destination within the camp, the death chamber. Within the camp, history comes to an end and Nature as we know it is abolished. Using Treblinka as a setting. Bluestone examines man's relationship with God. Having granted man the power of moral choice, can God, too, become a victim of the Holocaust? The title poem of this volume is a powerful exploration of the covenant, if any, between the Creator and the created. As Michael Waters has written: "'To pray is to go in all directions at once,' Stephen Bluestone acknowledges, and in poems that are prayerful and therefore formidably allusive, historical, and ambitious in their formalities, the poet relates 'stupendous tales...begging to be told.'" There are poems in this volume in which Lorca, Tolstoy, Kerouac, and Rilke's angelic orders hover over its pages. The title poem of The Painted Clock stands in the tradition of Elie Wiesel and the Book of Psalms while recalling Paul Celan in its attempt to comprehend the Holocaust: "Ashes, ashes, ashes, ashes, ashes, / the more we seek to know, the less we learn." In a reflection on the muses Bluestone adds that "I still can't say exactly what they do." But in poem after poem, Bluestone managers to keep their company and learn what they have to teach. Offering consolation through a modest but persistent faith, the author of The Painted Clock struggles to name the light and darkness suffusing the world. Book jacket.

Contents:

I The Painted Clock 1

II And Still the Slaughtered Rose 33

After Channel Firing 35

The Ghosts of the Somme 37

The General Slocum Disaster 38

Federico García Lorca Visits the Sephardic Cemeteries of New York 40

The Runner 41

Mad to Live 43

Mad to Talk 44

Mad to Be Saved 45

Sky Tombs 46

God's Great Hospice 47

The Scribe 48

Second Night Seder at the Pump House 49

The Castrati 50

The Silence 52

The Collector 54

Aunt Esther 56

Healthcare Debate 57

Jerusalem: A Vision 59

On the Sea 60

The Lower Ninth 62

Ichiro 2015 63

Bogart's Face 64

The Muses 65

"That Reef Affectation" 66

Adon Olam 67.

ISBN:

0881466557

9780881466553

OCLC:

1020616014