Machine generated contents note: IV. New Year. Desert Isle -- Everything -- Le Danton -- After -- Half Measures -- Craft Talk -- Fellow Traveler -- Right as Rain -- Epicenter -- Ring -- Self Portrait with Eraser -- No One -- The Bars Insist -- Bootstraps -- Bruise -- Weep Holes -- Too Long -- Rail -- Dust -- Openings -- Shiva -- II. No Moon, But -- Alchemy -- Bees -- Gaucin -- Another Gift -- Domestic -- Announcement -- Tattoo -- Stretch -- Registry -- Allee -- Magician -- Love -- Even -- Three Rivers -- One-Two -- Rabbit Hole -- Pain and Suffering -- Advert -- Gift -- First Love -- Dusk -- Chair -- Rooms -- Pebble -- Mirror -- Transatlantic -- The Last Word -- Matinee -- Playing Field -- Bridge -- Seaside -- Punctuated -- With -- With Us -- Forced -- December, Brightening -- Orchard -- III. Gratitude -- In the Car with the Theoretical Physicist -- Shadowboxer's Complaint -- Instrumental -- Naming -- How Everything -- What Would Have Been His Nineteenth Birthday -- Stop-Time -- Hymnals and Revivals -- Salad Days -- Home -- Horizon -- Ubi -- Eleven -- Crystal Ball -- Wind 101 -- The Blue Chair -- Tool Shed -- IV. Either/Or -- BombShelter -- 17th Century German Cobbler -- Guide to Becoming a Human Shield -- Bible Study -- The Thing You -- Safety Glasses -- Before the Headlines -- Protocol -- Bearer -- Peacekeepers -- Witness -- Another Mirror -- Tragic News -- Diaspora -- After the End -- Swing State -- Beating a Dead Horse -- No Man's Land -- New Year.
Summary:
"Clever, capricious poems grounded in the very matter of life: loving, losing, and persisting Andrea Cohen's Everything approaches the idea of the macro through an elastic inquiry of the micro. In a poem entitled "Dust," the speaker posits " We funnel it between the stones./ What stones become is what/ holds them together." The collection examines logic through analogy; for example, if everything is formed of anything, then isn't absence a product of abundance? In poems that follow their own line of questioning wherever it may lead-to destinations that are often unexpected and always rich with discovery-Cohen explores love, grief, and alternate endings. The worlds she creates in the poems expand, contract, change shape, and change course. On the subject of waiting, Cohen writes, "...someone kept/ punching a vending/ machine, as if another / hour might come out," and in the pliant universe of this collection, time might as well be vended or dispensed in an unexpected way. These poems ask us to remain open and to circumvent ordinary answers on the route toward extraordinary, nuanced ones"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.