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The absolute, relatively inaccessible / Walter Wangerin Jr. ; foreword by Scott Cairns.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Wangerin, Walter, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- American poetry.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (94 pages)
- Place of Publication:
- Eugene, Oregon : Cascade Books, [2017]
- Summary:
- The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible is a volume of poems divided into three parts. The three parts are bound together by a brace of persistent and developing themes, as well as by the repitition (and the development) of language, metaphor, and imagery. Part 1 presents various characters (mostly African American) confronting death. The poems in part 2 are spoken by an unnamed narrator about his cancer. My cancer, actually, and my experiences. Parts 2 and 3 both descend into silence. Part 3 is a radical reworking of the ancient Mesopotamian epic loosely known as The Songs of Heaven and Hell. The poems are not a translation, though each derives from a separate song, and each uses the characters, the events, the worldview, and the stark imagery of Babylon in the third century BCE. In many respects, these poems have the prosody of the biblical psalms. -- from back cover.
- Contents:
- Foreword / Scott Cairns
- Adams' photograph of Stieglitz
- Part I: Snow
- Cones of snow
- Milk and snow in three declensions
- A torque of time
- Gertrude's letter, midwinter
- Miz Lillian's memorial stones
- Et in Pacem
- Part 2: Cancer
- On an age-old anvil, wince and sing
- Pain
- November
- The wanderer
- The better metaphor
- Advice
- Endnote
- Zero at the bone
- Slow time
- Time's gyre
- Necrophagia: The mastery of the thing
- The effects of radiation
- To those I haven't time to write
- [untitled]
- Part 3: O Babylon!
- From the Mesopotamian : Poems of Heaven and Hell
- From The Hymn of the names of Marduk
- From A Prayer to the Gods of Night
- From Childbirth
- From Inann's Journey into Hell
- From Dumuzi Mourned
- From The son's reply
- [untitled].
- Notes:
- Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed July 27, 2017).
- ISBN:
- 1-4982-4061-5
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