University of Iowa Press, 2012 Paper: 978-1-60938-091-5 | eISBN: 978-1-60938-098-4 Library of Congress Classification PS3623.E3974G73 2012 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
From the intersection of public and private fear, Kerri Webster’s award-winning collection speaks of anxiety and awe, vanishings and reappearances. A city both rises and falls; worlds are simultaneously spoken into being and torn down by words. “This is how time sounds,” Webster writes; this is the hum and click of bodies “desirous of believing we’re all vehicle, every wet atom of us,” even as the saved seeds root in the fallen brickwork and the artifacts pile up: wisdom teeth, hummingbird skulls, plumb bobs, icons, antlers, incandescent bulbs.
Grand & Arsenal begins “Bless me I am not myself,” but it is not long before the probability of being blessed is revealed to be as remote as the concept of a whole self. Thus begins the book’s defining struggle, enacted by a multitude of voices which move from rush to stumble and back again—meanwhile using all the tools we as a culture use to hold fear at arm’s length.
We hear a familiar irony, as in “On a trip West, porn in the hotel room. I can take or leave it. The climax that puts me in the seats? World’s end.” We hear humor, as in “I believed in . . . / . . . a certain apocalypse not so much foretold as crafted / by large-brained monkeys.” We hear understatement, as in “knowing it does not matter / in the grand—she would say scheme, I would say / mishap—.” Most importantly, though, these poems allow for the fleeting triumph of an undefended voice, which appears often to emerge tentatively from a sort of exhausted collapse.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Kerri Webster is the author of a previous full-length collection, We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone (2005), as well as two chapbooks: Psalm Project (2009) and Rowing Through Fog (2003). Writer in Residence at Washington University in St. Louis from 2006 to 2010, she currently lives and writes in her native Idaho.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Part One
Invoke
Oracle Weather
Keeper, Keeper
Atomic Clock
The Book of Matthew
Seed Vault
Part Two
Tinnitus
Make of Her Peril a Figure
Empire Coat
Places I Haven’t Slept
Polysemy
Thrift
Little Ornaments
Diorama
Part Three
The Book of Agatha
Doppelganger
Implanted Memories
Vernal, Utah
The Palace at 4 A.M.
Sea Voyage
In the Exclusion Zone
Letter to a Young Poet
Foretold
Ecophilia
All the Way from Here
Postscript
Notes
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
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Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Iowa Press, 2012 Paper: 978-1-60938-091-5 eISBN: 978-1-60938-098-4
From the intersection of public and private fear, Kerri Webster’s award-winning collection speaks of anxiety and awe, vanishings and reappearances. A city both rises and falls; worlds are simultaneously spoken into being and torn down by words. “This is how time sounds,” Webster writes; this is the hum and click of bodies “desirous of believing we’re all vehicle, every wet atom of us,” even as the saved seeds root in the fallen brickwork and the artifacts pile up: wisdom teeth, hummingbird skulls, plumb bobs, icons, antlers, incandescent bulbs.
Grand & Arsenal begins “Bless me I am not myself,” but it is not long before the probability of being blessed is revealed to be as remote as the concept of a whole self. Thus begins the book’s defining struggle, enacted by a multitude of voices which move from rush to stumble and back again—meanwhile using all the tools we as a culture use to hold fear at arm’s length.
We hear a familiar irony, as in “On a trip West, porn in the hotel room. I can take or leave it. The climax that puts me in the seats? World’s end.” We hear humor, as in “I believed in . . . / . . . a certain apocalypse not so much foretold as crafted / by large-brained monkeys.” We hear understatement, as in “knowing it does not matter / in the grand—she would say scheme, I would say / mishap—.” Most importantly, though, these poems allow for the fleeting triumph of an undefended voice, which appears often to emerge tentatively from a sort of exhausted collapse.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Kerri Webster is the author of a previous full-length collection, We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone (2005), as well as two chapbooks: Psalm Project (2009) and Rowing Through Fog (2003). Writer in Residence at Washington University in St. Louis from 2006 to 2010, she currently lives and writes in her native Idaho.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Part One
Invoke
Oracle Weather
Keeper, Keeper
Atomic Clock
The Book of Matthew
Seed Vault
Part Two
Tinnitus
Make of Her Peril a Figure
Empire Coat
Places I Haven’t Slept
Polysemy
Thrift
Little Ornaments
Diorama
Part Three
The Book of Agatha
Doppelganger
Implanted Memories
Vernal, Utah
The Palace at 4 A.M.
Sea Voyage
In the Exclusion Zone
Letter to a Young Poet
Foretold
Ecophilia
All the Way from Here
Postscript
Notes
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 | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE