My Bishop and Other Poems / Michael Collier.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Collier, Michael, Author.

Series:

Phoenix poets.

Phoenix Poets

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poetry--Collections.

Poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (92 pages).

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Think of a time when you've feigned courage to make a friend, feigned forgiveness to keep one, or feigned indifference to simply stay out of it. What does it mean for our intimacies to fail us when we need them most? The poems of this collection explore such everyday dualities-how the human need for attachment is as much a source of pain as of vitality and how our longing for transcendence often leads to sinister complicities. The title poem tells the conflicted and devastating story of the poet's friendship with the now-disgraced Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, interweaving fragments of his parents' funerals, which the Bishop concelebrated, with memories of his childhood spiritual leanings and how they were disrupted by a pedophilic priest the Bishop failed to protect him from. This meditation on spiritual life, physical death, and betrayal is joined by an array of poised, short lyrics and expansive prose poems exploring how the terror and unpredictability of our era intrudes on our most intimate moments. Whether Michael Collier is writing about an airline disaster, Huey Newton's trial, Thomas Jefferson's bees, a piano in the woods, or his own fraught friendship with the disgraced Catholic Bishop, his syntactic verve, scrupulously observed detail, and flawless ear bring the felt-and sometimes frightening-dimensions of the mundane to life. Throughout, this collection pursues a quiet but ferocious need to get to the bottom of things.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

My Bishop and Other Poems

Poems

Notes

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226571058

022657105X

OCLC:

1125190686