University of Wisconsin Press, 2005 Paper: 978-0-299-21264-3 | eISBN: 978-0-299-21263-6 | Cloth: 978-0-299-21260-5 Library of Congress Classification PS3603.H557J34 2005 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Susanna Childress writes with an earnest desire to understand things physical and things spiritual. What results is a first collection of provocative, honest poetry that explores various human predicaments: a cancer-ridden wife, an explosive father, an infertile couple, various sexual aggressors, a missing girl. Such careful portraiture provokes the reader to consider the complexity of human love: how selfishness, fear, lust and even brutality might coincide with tenderness and loyalty. Ms. Childress's writing is refreshingly naive and clear, her voice essentially inquisitive. She is brave enough to look at the darkness of the world, but she is more courageous to hope.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Susanna Childress is finishing her Ph.D. in creative writing at Florida State University and this is her first book. She lives in Tallahassee.
REVIEWS
“Susanna Childress writes at the cutting edge of the long tradition of love poetry. Her poems often involve tense negotiations between a sharp cultural intelligence and a body that craves its fulfillment. She writes with grace about love and lust, and she unfailingly delivers rhythmic and linguistic pleasures to her lucky readers as they follow the course of these inquisitive, unpredictable poems.”—Billy Collins
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
I
Just Wanted to Show You a Picture of Myself
This Day Is in Love with Me
Aquarium
Nude Self-Portrait
Expiation
Lost in the Cant
Krash
Prose, I Say, Plasma
Inside a Thin Egg
Bucketful of Radiant Toys
Supernova Love Shah
Sprezzatura
I Inspect My Face
Negligee, Negligent, Negligence
Just Wanted to Show You a Picture of Myself
II
Jagged with Love
It's the First Thing
My Father, Naked at 28
Old Country Woman
He Talks Again of California
Jagged with Love
Out Smarting
Last April
Christmas, 2000
Love's Balsa Wood Triceratops
Kulibongbong for Lydia
III
A Rush of Bees
In Indiana
Like the Nudes of Lucian Freud
Daughter in the Waiting Room
A Rush of Bees
The Surgery
Sneaking Up on a Wildness
My Husband Giving Me a Bath
On Learning the Percentage of Non-Professional Head and Neck Massages Which Do Not Lead to Sexual Intercourse
Santo Domingo Full of Song
First Child, in the Womb
Every Dance with Caroline
God Is the Dream
IV
House of Bread
To Prayer
Across the World a Man Is Lifting His Gun
Muchas Gracias, My Love
Boca Chica, Playa de Republica Dominicana
This Is Just a Suggestion
Unearthing
For the Man from Peru
To Jill Behrman, November 2000
To Jill Behrman, March 2003
We Take the Sky
After The Virgin of Vladimir, 12th c., Anon.
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