Space Struck
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٤٫٣ - ٤ من التقييمات
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- 15٫99 US$
وصف الناشر
This astonishing, self-assured debut leads us on an exploration to the stars and back, begging us to reconsider our boundaries of self, time, space, and knowledge. The speaker writes, “…the universe/is an arrow/without end/and it asks only one question;/How dare you?”
Zig-zagging through the realms of nature, science, and religion, one finds St. Francis sighing in the corner of a studio apartment, tides that are caused by millions of oysters “gasping in unison,” an ark filled with women in its stables, and prayers that reach God fastest by balloon. There’s pathos: “When my new lover tells me I’m correct to love him, I/realize the sound isn’t metal at all. It’s not the coins rattling/ on concrete, but the fingers scraping to pick them up.” And humor, too: “…even the sun’s been sighing Not you again/when it sees me.” After reading this far-reaching, inventive collection, we too are startled, space struck, our pockets gloriously “filled with space dust.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Give me more time// and I'm sure I could make this funny," Lewis states in this vibrant debut collection, an exquisite feast of the brutal and the irreverent presented by a modern voice. Lewis writes to capture apprehension and urgency: "I'm/ the vice president of panic, and the president is/ missing," and "most of what I see, I see through the gaps/ in my fingers," as well as to broadcast love and vulnerability from an unstable world, "like a pilot turning off her engines midflight/ to listen for rain on wings." Here, the unfathomable is rendered plausible as birdwatchers invade the poet's home to see the last ivory-billed woodpecker, demanding "postcards/ and T-shirts," and "an avian-themed carousel." Lewis receives visits from God and St. Francis, is sassed by God's secretary, and harbors ghosts between their teeth. They observe tiny men on their beloved's eyes, musing, "when you press your palms/ against your eyes, do they see/ the sparks of light and create new/ names for stars?" Like the natural environment that they often reference, Lewis's poems are sincere, strange and vulnerable, a combination that makes this work both fragile and vital.
