Terra NovaFinalist, Balcones Poetry Prize, 2017 In this bold and ambitious book-length poem, National Book Award finalist Cynthia Huntington explores exile and migration—what it means to lose, seek, and find home in all its iterations—through a polyphonic work, written in multiple voices and evoking the method of Hart Crane’s The Bridge or the Nighttown episode in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Yet it is also a tough and vernacular work, owing as much to Patti Smith and the Clash as it does to High Modernism. Again and again the work shows us outsiders forced into metaphorical and literal wildernesses, whether in a retelling of the biblical Israelites lost in the desert or in stories from Provincetown, Massachusetts, where the new world struggles into being at the edge of the sea. Yet the voices here, across many times and places, refuse to give in to desolation and despair. Huntington’s approach is hybrid, oscillating between verse and lyrical prose to create a work that falls somewhere between an epic poem and a collection of lyric essays. Whether chronicling the creation of the world and the first exile from the Judeo-Christian Garden of Eden or imagining the terror and thrill of the first sea voyages, this is electric poetry: challenging, startling, and fulfilling. |
Contents
I Come Now Angel | 1 |
II The Back Shore | 10 |
III The Book of Paradise | 18 |
IV The Tenth Island | 25 |
V Crónica | 34 |
VI The Book of Men | 41 |
VII The Prophecy of Affliction | 51 |
VIII Histories | 57 |
IX The Book of Mystery | 70 |
X The Prophecy of the Dead | 76 |
XI Water of Night | 83 |
XII Boletes in September | 92 |
Acknowledgments | 97 |
Other Books in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry | 98 |
Back Cover | 101 |
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Common terms and phrases
arrives beach become beginning birds blood blue boats body bones Born break breath broken called carry cell clouds cold dark dead died disappear dream dust earth edge empty everything exile eyes face falling father fire fish flesh floated floor ghost glass gone green hand harbor hard head hold inside land leaves light live look lost mean morning mother moving never night ocean once passing past pulled rain remember rise road rock sail salt sand secret shadow shape ship shore side slave sleep space spirit stand stars stone stranger street surface thing thousand touch town trees turn voice waiting wake walked wall wander watch waves weight whole wind window winter woman woods