Bestiary

Elise Paschen

Publication Year: 2009

"The poems in Elise Paschen's Bestiary explore domestic preoccupations set against the backdrop of the wild-heartedness, real and imagined, of the animal world," praises the poet Jason Shinder. In this modern-day Bestiary, or "Book of Beasts," the line between animal and human is thinly-drawn. The daughter of a Celtic king, through love, is transformed from beast to human; lovers take flight as moon and owl; manatees transform, before the explorers' eyes, into mermaids. This dynamic runs throughout the collection: taking flight, hovering between air and earth, plunging, and then resurfacing from water. The poems create a constant engagement between what tethers us to our daily lives—marriage, motherhood, raising a family, the loss of parents in old age—and the desire for other worlds. Exploring notions of transformation, these poems cross thresholds between animal and human, between death and life. Award-winning poet, Elise Paschen, creates in her third and most complex poetry collection, work which is elegant and passionate, preternaturally still and reckless all at once. Paschen displays a variety of form and nuance from ghazals to long-lined free verse poems. Writing out of a distinct Western literary tradition, but tapping into her Native American (Osage) roots, Paschen celebrates the mythic, the unusual, the magical glimpsed in the everyday.

Published by: Red Hen Press

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“Birth” is dedicated to Alexandra Brainerd; “Hive” to Stephen Brainerd; “Sea-Change” to Lisa Lee; “Raccoon on a Branch” to Jason Shinder; “Under the Dome” to Agha Shahid Ali; and “Magnificent Frigatebird” to Stuart Brainerd...

Biographical Note

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pp. 79-

Elise Paschen is the author of Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and Houses: Coasts. Her poems have been published in The New Republic, Ploughshares, and Shenandoah, among other magazines, and in numerous anthologies. She is editor of the New York Times best-selling anthology Poetry Speaks to Children and co-editor of...

E-ISBN-13: 9781597093729
Print-ISBN-13: 9781597091312
Print-ISBN-10: 1597091316

Page Count: 80
Publication Year: 2009

Edition: First

Bestiary

Title Page, Other Works by the Author, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

Epigraph

Part I

Monarch

Engagement

Moving In

Barn Owl and Moon

Fertility

Trapeze

Birth

The Flycatcher’s Fall

Prey

Miss Spider’s Guests

Hive

Sanctuary

Under Siege

Part II

Wi´-gi-e

Warning Signs

Afterward

Behind the Swan

Ghost-Echo

Disappearing Act

Solstice in Snow

Pond in Winter

Sea-Change

Isthmus

Squibnocket

Chancing Upon the Manatees

Raccoon on a Branch

Part III

The Broken Swan

Ash

Crossing

Eurydice

Mary of Magdala

Outside the Tomb

Farewell

Under the Dome

Cicadas

Cradle-Song

Threshold

Feast for the Living

First Snow

Magnificent Frigatebird

Acknowledgments

Biographical Note

Research Areas

Recommend

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