Honey with Tobacco Contributor(s): Boyers, Peg (Author) |
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ISBN: 0226069664 ISBN-13: 9780226069661 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $48.51 Product Type: Hardcover Published: April 2007 Annotation: "Pieta " This time the migraine came with a vision bathed in night sweat: I was sitting on the Eames chair, your man's body on my lap, legs and arms white as casein draped over mine, spilling onto the cassock, new sores on your legs, dried blood on your feet and hands, from your chalk mouth the word "forgive me, "from mine, the impossible "no " "Hard Bread", " "Peg Boyers's debut poetry collection, with verse spoken in the imagined voice of the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, was widely praised for its inspired ventriloquism and its brilliant lyricism. In "Honey with Tobacco", Boyers's own intensely personal voice emerges in three strikingly distinctive variants. The first part of the book is the most explicitly autobiographical, bringing together poems that explore the poet's Cuban American experience and a childhood marked by travel, the tropics, and varieties of disenchantment. The middle sequence of poems concerns a mother, a father, and a son, a postmodern holy family whose ordeals are evoked in a terse, terrifying narrative. In familiar tableaux drawn from the Bible that have inspired great works of art--the Annunciation, the Pieta, and Judgment Day--Boyers explores what it means in contemporary America to be "blessed among women" and whether and how art can containgrief. The final section of the book confronts age, desire, and regret in a series of personal poems that plumb baser human instincts and the speakers' determination to dwell in darkness, when necessary, without abandoning the sacred. Praise for "Hard Bread" "A great achievement of poetic voice . . . . It's absolutely clear what these poems are 'about, ' and they are unapologetic in their devotion to subject, clarity, precision, and accessibility."--Steven Cramer, "Poetry" |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Poetry | American - General |
Dewey: 811.54 |
LCCN: 2006020785 |
Series: Phoenix Poets (Hardcover) |
Physical Information: 0.48" H x 8.82" W x 6.35" (0.51 lbs) 64 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Piet This time the migraine came with a vision your man's body on my lap, legs and arms white as casein draped over mine, spilling onto the cassock, new sores on your legs, dried blood on your feet and hands, from your chalk mouth the words forgive me, from mine, the impossible no Hard Bread, Peg Boyers's debut poetry collection, with verse spoken in the imagined voice of the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, was widely praised for its inspired ventriloquism and its brilliant lyricism. In Honey with Tobacco, Boyers's own intensely personal voice emerges in three strikingly distinctive variants. The first part of the book is the most explicitly autobiographical, bringing together poems that explore the poet's Cuban American experience and a childhood marked by travel, the tropics, and varieties of disenchantment. The middle sequence of poems concerns a mother, a father, and a son, a postmodern holy family whose ordeals are evoked in a terse, terrifying narrative. In familiar tableaux drawn from the Bible that have inspired great works of art--the Annunciation, the Pieta, and Judgment Day--Boyers explores what it means in contemporary America to be "blessed among women" and whether and how art can contain grief. The final section of the book confronts age, desire, and regret in a series of personal poems that plumb baser human instincts and the speakers' determination to dwell in darkness, when necessary, without abandoning the sacred. Praise for Hard Bread: "A great achievement of poetic voice . . . . It's absolutely clear what these poems are 'about, ' and they are unapologetic in their devotion to subject, clarity, precision, and accessibility."--Steven Cramer, Poetry |
Contributor Bio(s): Boyers, Peg: - Peg Boyers is a lecturer in the English Department at Skidmore College and the executive editor of Salmagundi. She is also on the poetry faculty of the New York State Summer Writers Institute. |