Trace
Poems
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning poet behind Owl of Minerva, a collection of poems exploring themes of faith, memory, and meaning.
His arresting ninth collection of poems, Eric Pankey's Trace locates itself at a threshold between faith and doubt—between the visible and the invisible, the say-able and the ineffable, the physical and the metaphysical. Also a map of the poet's journey into a deep depression, these poems confront one man's struggle to overcome depression's smothering weight and presence. And with remarkable clarity and complexity, Trace charts the poet's attempt to be inspired, to breathe again, to give breath and life to words. Ever solemn, ever existential, Pankey's poems find us at our most vulnerable, the moment when we as humans—believers and nonbelievers alike—must ultimately pause to question the uncertain fate of our souls.
"Pankey's language is beautiful and spare and he constantly surprises with profound lines. Pankey's built a name for himself, and considering the quality of the poems in this collection, it's no surprise."—C. L. Bledsoe, Coal Hill Review
"Pankey's ninth collection follows the poet into the hushed "gray dawn" of depression as he searches, often in vain, for God, and for faith in nature and himself…. It's hard to deny the conflict that Pankey explores honestly and powerfully in these new poems."—Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pankey's ninth collection follows the poet into the hushed "gray dawn" of depression as he searches, often in vain, for God, and for faith in nature and himself. Pankey is compelled by the way this longing for the divine can be present and absent within the same hour, how poems where "antlers hold open the sky" can just as soon lead to a weary married couple who are "so tired of watching the war on TV:/ The same body dragged through the street,/ Snagged for a moment in a pothole." While certain of his handlings of perfunctory sex, cloud watching, and hangovers might make for poems that feel equally passionless, loafing, and achy, it's hard to deny the conflict that Pankey explores honestly and powerfully in these new poems. Poetry, God, nature none of these things provide lasting solace, if they provide any at all: "One reads until each page is blank,/ keeps reading,/ As if the truth of scripture will be revealed." Where Pankey goes looking for the heavens he most often finds his own body, or a trace of a myth in nature that helps him challenge the old stories. "No gods offered us fire," he writes in "Cold Mountain Mediations" "A burning branch/ fell from a tree and we dragged it back home."
