Only
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Urgent from the outset, Rebecca Foust’s Only insists that the only thing worth writing about is everything. Prompted to confront what she does not know, the speaker lists, “Null. All. What’s after death or before.” This book scales the cliff-face of adulthood, that paradoxical ascent in which the longer we live the less we know of life, in which we find that each of us is only ourselves and yet delicately interconnected with everyone, everything, else. These candid lyrics ponder our broken political systems, family (dys)function and parenting challenges, divergent and intersecting identities, the complexities of sexuality, natural refuge and climate catastrophe, and in general what it means to be human in a world that sometimes feels as if it is approaching apocalypse. At the ledge of this abyss, however, Foust reminds us of the staggering beauty of life, the legacies of survival in the echoes of care that outlast us: “I came / to the canyon rim and saw // how best to carry you: I let the stone go."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The meditative and melodious second collection from Foust (Paradise Drives) relishes in the daily discoveries that make life endlessly mysterious. "Prompt" begins with instructions from poet Stephen Dunn: "Write only what you absolutely do not know, not what you're merely not sure of." The poem continues, "Null. All. What's after death or before./ Where my old dog is now, my mother,/ my father—not the ashes clumped/ in a box, but the mad licking/ and tail-beating and the gaze,/ dense with devotion, of iris-less eyes." Foust is in conversation elsewhere too, as in "Dawn Piece" (after "Night Piece" by Stanley Kunitz), which beautifully asks: "Love,// believe it is only my mouth seeking the last marrow/ memory before night bleeds out// into the neap-tide drawn dawn, and let me sleep on..." The author has a gift for rhythmic imagery, such as in "Dream of the Rood": "The town's reason, gone. Stripper pit/strawberries/stripper pit/corn./ Coke-caked smokestacks, brick pink/ in morning sun," or "spring still half on the spool." These poems finely weave contrasting subjects, sensually recollecting earlier life while casting a hard, penetrating look at identity, politics, family, and the climate crisis. In these beautifully crafted and ecstatic pages, Foust celebrates the strength of memory and the interconnectedness of all people.
