Wound Is the Origin of Wonder: Poems
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Lyrical, beautiful, and descriptive.” —Mandana Chaffa, BOMB
“In ravishing, formally exploratory poems, Maya C. Popa wields the lyric like a reparative scalpel, evoking wonder and woundedness in equal measure.” —Meghan O’Rourke
Award-winning poet Maya C. Popa suggests that our restless desires are inseparable from our mortality in this pressing and precise collection. Rooting out profound meaning in language to wrench us from the moorings of the familiar and into the realm of the extraordinary, the volume asks, how do we articulate what’s by definition inarticulable? Where does sight end and imagination begin?
Lucid and musically rich, these poems sound an appeal to a dwindling natural world and summon moments from the lives of literary forbearers—John Milton’s visit to Galileo, a vase broken by Marcel Proust—to unveil fresh wonder in the unlikely meetings of the past. Popa dramatizes the difficulties of loving a world that is at once rich with beauty and full of opportunities for grief, and reveals that the natural arc of wonder, from astonishment to reflection, more deeply connects us with our humanity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Popa's subtle and gorgeous second collection (after American Faith) maps the conflicting effects of having "wanted all the world, its beauties,/ and its injuries." The ecstatic language of these meditations and confessions is animated as much by pain as by joy. Popa, a reviews editor at PW, refuses to disparage the world simply because it does not offer "the good news I had hoped for" and mines childhood for glimmers of hope to light the contemporary darkness with "Full days settled by wildflower and stone." She also asks for passion and tenderness in love ("Let's be hungry a little/ while longer. Let's not hurt each other if we can") to counter the weight of the pandemic, lifted a little when "Friends fed the day hope/ like a broken fever." She turns to literature—Milton, Gilgamesh, the Bible—as well as to nature (and even WebMD) for guidance, seeking consolation wherever it may be found. "The wound is where/ the light enters us," she writes. Indeed, in these pages, the truth of each day is brutal but also beautiful.
