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From the Book of Giants
Contributor(s): Weiner, Joshua (Author)
ISBN: 0226890465     ISBN-13: 9780226890463
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
OUR PRICE:   $18.81  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: October 2006
Qty:
Annotation: "Song"
" "
" "for Thom Gunn
There is no east or west
in the wood you fear and seek,
stumbling past a gate of moss
and what you would not take.
And what you thought you had
(the Here that is no rest)
you make from it an aid
to form no east, no west.
No east. No west. No need
for given map or bell,
vehicle, screen, or speed.
Forget the house, forget the hill.
Taking its title from a set of writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, "From the Book of Giants" retunes the signal broadcast from these ancient fragments, transmitting a new sound in the shape of a Roman drain cover, in imitations of Dante and Martial, in the voice of a cricket and the hard-boiled American photographer Weegee, in elegies both public and personal, and in poems that range from the social speech of letters to the gnomic language of riddles. Out of poetry's "complex of complaint and praise, " Joshua Weiner discovers, in one poem, his own complicity in Empire during his son's baseball game at the White House. In another, an embroidered parrot sings a hermetic nursery rhyme to an infant after 9/11.


Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | American - General
Dewey: 811.6
LCCN: 2006006188
Series: Phoenix Poets
Physical Information: 0.24" H x 6.16" W x 8.52" (0.32 lbs) 88 pages
Themes:
- Geographic Orientation - Arizona
- Locality - Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona
- Cultural Region - Southwest U.S.
- Cultural Region - Western U.S.
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

Song

for Thom Gunn

There is no east or west

in the wood you fear and seek,

stumbling past a gate of moss

and what you would not take.

And what you thought you had

(the Here that is no rest)

you make from it an aid

to form no east, no west.

No east. No west. No need

for given map or bell,

vehicle, screen, or speed.

Forget the house, forget the hill.

Taking its title from a set of writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, From the Book of Giants retunes the signal broadcast from these ancient fragments, transmitting a new sound in the shape of a Roman drain cover, in imitations of Dante and Martial, in the voice of a cricket and the hard-boiled American photographer Weegee, in elegies both public and personal, and in poems that range from the social speech of letters to the gnomic language of riddles. Out of poetry's "complex of complaint and praise," Joshua Weiner discovers, in one poem, his own complicity in Empire during his son's baseball game at the White House. In another, an embroidered parrot sings a hermetic nursery rhyme to an infant after 9/11.


Contributor Bio(s): Weiner, Joshua: - Joshua Weiner is professor of English at the University of Maryland. He lives in Washington, DC.