Penitential Cries
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- US$9.99
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- US$9.99
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A stirring, lyric new collection by Susan Howe, one of America’s foremost poets
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN/VOELKER AWARD FOR POETRY
What labor to live forever. Speak of the elect what can you do in all this world so much life in the little of it.
In four parts, Susan Howe’s new book opens with the arresting long prose poem “Penitential Cries,” followed by a group of word-collages “Sterling Park in the Dark,” “The Deserted Shelf,” and finally a brief sparrow poem. Speaking of her new work written in “the evening of life,” Howe quotes Thomas Wyatt: My galley, chargèd with forgetfulness, / thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass. She says: “I love those two lines. Between trespass and penitence. In the wilderness of the Book Stack Tower inquiry is trespass. Now at eighty-seven,” the poet adds, regarding Penitential Cries, “I want to express my pilgrim's progress between rocks and paper places. The clock is ticking. It's getting late. Supper is on the table. Our father lies full fifty fathoms five. A storm is coming.”
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This spare and arresting collection from Howe (Concordance) comprises four series poems that address aging, history, and the afterlives of texts and language. The eponymous opening section is a long, elegiac prose poem studded with references to religious texts, Roman history, and intriguing glimpses into the poet's research process. It moves effortlessly from blunt representations of emotion ("I have wept away all my brain") to esoteric mysticism ("Marguerite Porete says she cannot have what God wills she should/ will. For her, will is nothing compared to the fullness she will never/ be given, and this is the will of God"). In the second section, "Sterling Park in the Dark," Howe pulls from scans of works by John Donne, Goethe, Henry James, and others to create typographically innovative mini-poems. The third section, "The Deserted Shelf," is an associative meditation on memory and reading that thrums with loss: "You can't return to the deserted shelf in your soul across/ miles of brown blanket bog and sand." The final section, "Chipping Sparrow," consists of one shorter poem that distills the volume's themes into a quiet but transfixing sequence on mortality. Howe reaffirms her position as a poet of the archives, bringing a new and enduring life to historical texts.
