Absence And Light

contents

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pp. vii-

acknowledgments

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pp. ix-

I would like to thank the following people for support and stimulating discussion during the writing of Absence and Light: Elizabeth Claman, Robin Cochran, Paul Elie, John Haislip, Robert Kyr, Denise Levertov, Robert Hill...

absences

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pp. 3-44

Exhausted from driving and from lingering grief, I šnally reach the Klamath marshes, where my enthusiasms slacken. My emotional state leaves me comical and obvious, miserable in the steady rain. I am drained: apt to absorb, and apt to project. I imagine the moon in my humid mouth: a coolness, an acrid sting, while the rain mingles sand with silt, while islands the size of my body are easily built and ruined...

presences

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pp. 47-86

Imagine releasing seventeen mallards, on a clear night, under the stars. Some have been conšned in lightproof enclosures. Some have been fed, others left hungry. Some have been living under altered daylight to reset their internal clocks...

intimacy

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pp. 89-137

Narcissus, there are three persons in your mixed theology: the father, who is the past; the son, the present moment; and the holy future, hovering like a guest at the door. And there are more persons than the man you fixate upon, the erotic and the ordinary face glowering in your pond. Instead, your body is all laid out in array, glittering...

works consulted

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pp. 139-141