In this Book
- Never Be the Horse
- Book
- 1999
- Published by: The University of Akron Press
- Series: Akron Series in Poetry
summary
Never Be the Horse depicts the world of a postmodern Dark Dorothy whose attempts to return home are foiled when she falls into the Garden of Eden, into the underworld with Walt Whitman, into mysterious versions of her own childhood. The poems evoke this nighttime within the self haunted by mythic and shadow-paradises--of home, homeland, the original garden--where "every story is made to hide / the others." Here, Adam slips on a piece of Eve's clothing, a child falls in love with the bomb, and a mourner watching the whores chased from the cemetery laments. It is also a world of erotic disguises. Still, it remains recognizably this world. The parent lies to the child about death, and the child lies to the parent about death. In the journey between those lies, as in the journey taken by the horse of the title, language becomes the place of refuge. It is there that "one world is always beginning." From "willingness . . . speaking its motherese," to the devil's "gossamer gibber," the voices in these poems discover that to be human is, as Heidegger said, "to be a conversation."
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Dedication
- p. vii
- Part I
- Multiple Adam
- p. 5
- Since I Have Lived
- pp. 8-9
- Hound and Leper
- pp. 12-13
- I Have Set My Heart on the Sparrow
- pp. 14-15
- The Book of Hens
- p. 18
- The Painted Adam
- p. 19
- Unmeasured Prelude
- p. 20
- Once a Shoot of Heaven
- pp. 21-22
- With a Ravenous Spike
- pp. 23-25
- The First House Is Burning
- pp. 26-28
- The Suitor
- p. 29
- Never Be the Horse
- p. 33
- The Betrayer
- p. 37
- The Lying Childhood
- pp. 38-39
- Sometimes White
- pp. 40-41
- The Weight
- pp. 45-46
- Lucifer's Crown
- pp. 47-53
- Retro Lullaby
- pp. 54-55
- Flowering Adam
- pp. 57-58
- TheTongue of the Sphinx
- pp. 59-60
- Being Pharaoh
- pp. 62-65
Additional Information
ISBN
9781935603931
Related ISBN(s)
9781884836541
MARC Record
OCLC
607416080
Pages
65
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No