Nakedness, Death, and the Number Zero: PoemsThe critically acclaimed poet and translator Brooks Haxton embraces life, from our naked beginnings to the first signs of middle age and beyond, in this inviting collection of poems. The book opens with the dramatic birth of twins, and speaks in the intimate voice of a husband, father, and poet. Diverse products of the imagination pass through Haxton’s generous mind—the mysterious number zero, Milton’s “Lycidas,” nuclear technology—even as he captures the humor and pathos of the everyday. In these brief, exquisite lyrics, meditations, and short stories in verse, he immerses his reader in the heat of teenage rivalry and friendship, the tender comedy of sex, and the amazements of the natural world. Here, from a book indelible in its language and feeling, are the last few lines: My daughters my twin girls say Ba for bird for book for bottle—Ba: in Egypt, bird with a human head, the soul. They wake and wake their mother. Ba! They point into the dark. Ba, Ba! they say, and back to nursing weary in her arms. |
Contents
TEENAGE IKON | |
I SWORE MY LOVE ON THE APPOINTED DAY | |
WHAT IF THE OLD LOVE SHOULD RETURN | |
TWEEG | |
DARK ENOUGH TO SEE | |
A Note About the Author | |
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alive Archimedes arms asking Aubade belly bird blacked-out houses blue Brooks Haxton calm catalpa Catullus Codeine cricket dead dirty rice Dream Half Waking drink dust empty eyes face feel finger fingertips fire flame flesh Flute and Thunder Francie fucking green Gwen Gwen's hand head heard heaven hellbender Immortals Ever Think incest Ink It Comes knows laughing Light of Heraclitus Lillie lisp looked Lycidas Matter Inexpressible Meleager midnight mind Miriam Molybdenum mother naked neck like sculpture never nightfall Nightjar other's Ovid palm Pilgrimage of Young plane poem poetry pubic hair pulled rain river root canal rose salamander Sanskrit Sestinas skin sleep slip smile smoke snapped snow Snowfall somewhere soul Spin star student animatedly swore my love talk teenage teeth tell thought told took touch Tree Surgeon turned Tweeg twin girls whip-poor-will willow words writhes Yearner