Northwestern University Press, 2008 Paper: 978-0-8101-5186-4 | Cloth: 978-0-8101-5187-1 Library of Congress Classification PS3568.Y3977W4 2008 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
John Rybicki offers up an unafraid set of poems in this charged book of verse. We Bed Down Into Water is rich with imagery of family, love, illness, death, and, indeed, water, which seeps in throughout the pages: rivers, pools, rain, and tears. His moving stories, in both prose and verse, struggle to hang on to a vision of the world that can still allow benevolence, luck, and laughter. In this, the collection embodies a contradiction: it is a tender book of fury, a book of bleak hopefulness.
Rybicki’s work is steeped in challenge: the biological and spiritual challenge posed by his beloved’s recurrent cancer or the daily challenges of an adopted child who could be, all too easily, lost. He spins these phenomenal struggles into a lyrical book that offers hope and awakens the reader into a new way of seeing.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Rybicki is currently the Sandburg-Auden-Stein Poet-in-Residence at Olivet College. His published works include Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider and Traveling at High Speeds as well as poems in numerous anthologies and periodicals.
REVIEWS
"John Rybicki collects the ordinary elements of a work day, whether it's work at the tire shop or work at the desk 'cracking one sharp stone against a page until it sheds/the proper sparks . . .' These are the fruits of hard labor and love, a poet banging away until the beams are balanced, until life is balanced for one day against all the confusion and swirling called a life. It is love, after all, that begs this testimony, but it is devotion that allows it to flower into song." --Sandra Cisneros, best-selling author of The House on Mango Street and Caramelo
"I cannot, dare not, will not commit the crime of commenting on Rybicki's verses. All I might do is cry with him, yet lack the courage to venture a feeling anywhere within the infernal precinct of this man's authenticity. Song, song--he, Rybicki is singing." --Gordon Lish
"John Rybicki has a hurricane heart, a hammer-heart, that is just waiting to unleash itself upon this perhaps undeserving world." --Rick Bass
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments 000
I
Thirty Years Ago 000
Julie Ann in the Bone Marrow Unit, Zion, Illinois 000
Me and My Lass, We Are a Poem 000
Love Is the Heel That Knocks Hard Against the Floor 000
Tire Shop Poem 000
A Song for Kay Mullen 000
The Earth Is Not Quiet 000
Our Romance 000
This Tape Measure Made of Light 000
Outside the Bone Marrow Unit 000
II
Interlochen Center for the Arts 000
The Violin Now, My God the Violin 000
Fire Psalm 000
Bulrushes 000
Two Movements for Martel Epperson 000
Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider 000
Say My Name 000
Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me 000
Helena's Hair 000
Not Knowing Enough About Physics to Write This Poem 000
Long Before This Tenderness Between Us Was Born 000
So Quiet Sending 000
Snow 000
Fire Psalm Revisited 000
III
Julie Ovary Song 000
Sleep Piling Up, Sleep Coming On 000
The Story 000
This Sun 000
King 000
Saint Clare of Montefalco 000
Silhouette 000
The Boy 000
Three Lanterns 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Northwestern University Press, 2008 Paper: 978-0-8101-5186-4 Cloth: 978-0-8101-5187-1
John Rybicki offers up an unafraid set of poems in this charged book of verse. We Bed Down Into Water is rich with imagery of family, love, illness, death, and, indeed, water, which seeps in throughout the pages: rivers, pools, rain, and tears. His moving stories, in both prose and verse, struggle to hang on to a vision of the world that can still allow benevolence, luck, and laughter. In this, the collection embodies a contradiction: it is a tender book of fury, a book of bleak hopefulness.
Rybicki’s work is steeped in challenge: the biological and spiritual challenge posed by his beloved’s recurrent cancer or the daily challenges of an adopted child who could be, all too easily, lost. He spins these phenomenal struggles into a lyrical book that offers hope and awakens the reader into a new way of seeing.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Rybicki is currently the Sandburg-Auden-Stein Poet-in-Residence at Olivet College. His published works include Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider and Traveling at High Speeds as well as poems in numerous anthologies and periodicals.
REVIEWS
"John Rybicki collects the ordinary elements of a work day, whether it's work at the tire shop or work at the desk 'cracking one sharp stone against a page until it sheds/the proper sparks . . .' These are the fruits of hard labor and love, a poet banging away until the beams are balanced, until life is balanced for one day against all the confusion and swirling called a life. It is love, after all, that begs this testimony, but it is devotion that allows it to flower into song." --Sandra Cisneros, best-selling author of The House on Mango Street and Caramelo
"I cannot, dare not, will not commit the crime of commenting on Rybicki's verses. All I might do is cry with him, yet lack the courage to venture a feeling anywhere within the infernal precinct of this man's authenticity. Song, song--he, Rybicki is singing." --Gordon Lish
"John Rybicki has a hurricane heart, a hammer-heart, that is just waiting to unleash itself upon this perhaps undeserving world." --Rick Bass
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments 000
I
Thirty Years Ago 000
Julie Ann in the Bone Marrow Unit, Zion, Illinois 000
Me and My Lass, We Are a Poem 000
Love Is the Heel That Knocks Hard Against the Floor 000
Tire Shop Poem 000
A Song for Kay Mullen 000
The Earth Is Not Quiet 000
Our Romance 000
This Tape Measure Made of Light 000
Outside the Bone Marrow Unit 000
II
Interlochen Center for the Arts 000
The Violin Now, My God the Violin 000
Fire Psalm 000
Bulrushes 000
Two Movements for Martel Epperson 000
Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider 000
Say My Name 000
Her Body Like a Lantern Next to Me 000
Helena's Hair 000
Not Knowing Enough About Physics to Write This Poem 000
Long Before This Tenderness Between Us Was Born 000
So Quiet Sending 000
Snow 000
Fire Psalm Revisited 000
III
Julie Ovary Song 000
Sleep Piling Up, Sleep Coming On 000
The Story 000
This Sun 000
King 000
Saint Clare of Montefalco 000
Silhouette 000
The Boy 000
Three Lanterns 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE