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I am the big heart / Sarah Venart.

Van Pelt Library PR9199.4.V46 I2 2020
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Venart, Sarah, 1968- author.
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Families--Poetry.
Families.
Spouses.
Parent and child--Poetry.
Parent and child.
Spouses--Poetry.
Genre:
Poetry.
Physical Description:
98 pages : portrait ; 23 cm
Place of Publication:
Kingston, ON : Brick Books, [2020]
Summary:
A love story to the emotional self--this heart is tender, but it also has a savage bite. -- What does it mean to be the big heart? Or to hope to be the big heart? Or to fail to be that big heart? How far can a heart stretch? How does being a parent stretch it further? How does a heart manage under the pressure of children, of self, of hospital technician, of partner, of death? In this collection, big heartedness is both demand and desire. It emerges from family life--the kid who says to your face that she prefers her other parent; the father monkeying around in the art gallery; the mother who "gets on with it" in silence; the husband, distant and intimate under the marriage yoke. There is also in this collection the stirring of wilder desires than family is supposed to nurture, feelings more fiercely self-assertive than a parent--a mother particularly--is supposed to admit. This collection asks how to rise to the occasions that family presents and also how to let oneself spill over the bounds of familial roles. Venart's poems reach into the past but don't get lost there; they look the present in the face--they have to: the clock is ticking, the children calling, there are hot dogs to be sliced and the dog won't walk itself. The title is ironic. And also kind of secretly stoically hoping that it's not ironic. But it is: -- ?And now everyone is arrow arrow, arrows. Everyone harpoons. And I am the big heart, aren't I? When my black dog was being put down, in her last second I whispered, Squirrel. -- "Epiphany"
Contents:
Machine generated contents note: THE BIG HEART
Epiphany
Attenborough
Walk to School
The Chauffeur
The Midwife Advises Me
This Strange Thing Happened the Day You Were Born
The Difficult Ones
Origami
Fox's Sleep
Murmuration Digression
On the Resourcefulness of Others
All Hands on Deck
STILL FULL OF ARROWS
The Widening
Albert County Breeder
A White Tent Goes Up
Troy
What Are You Waiting For?
The Heart Speaks
I Believe You Still Have My Key
Sonnet in Waiting Room
Against Confession
How It Worked
Falling in Love
Octopus Laser
Stun Guns
FLOWERS FOR ALL OCCASIONS
Then
The Rising Action
Wild Exile
At the Foundling Home
Back to the Land
Lambing Season
Wedding in Rimouski
Juice
The Dress
It Comes Back
Denouement
Flowers for All Occasions
The Falling Action
The News
Mink Attack
You Can't Take It with You
As a Pigeon in Its Dovecote
The Art of Waiting
The End
The Saving of Things
THE HEIRESS
On Being a Sculptor
Room 317, Chateau de Champlain
A Visitation
Tell Me What to Do
The Heiress
Fox's Sleep Revisited
Woolf Digression
Chance Harbour
Nor Do I Want To
Valentine
JOY IN THE CLOISTERS
Overheard at the Sports Centre
The Residency
Blanche
You Bring It Home with You
Supper Hour
The Standstill
Killing the Dream
In the Figurative Barn
When in Pompeii
The Row House
Domestic Scene
Darling Citizen
Joy in the Cloisters.
Notes:
Poems.
Other Format:
Online version: Venart, Sarah, 1968- I am the big heart.
ISBN:
9781771315364
1771315369
OCLC:
1147973319
Publisher Number:
99986913325

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