The Reformation

by Katherine Bode-Lang, Stephen Dunn (Introduction)

Overview

Katherine Bode-Lang's fierce and lyrical poems undertake the reformation of family mythology, place, and loves that each life requires to become its own. As Stephen Dunn notes in his introduction, "One of the classic tricks of actors is when you want to get the attention of your audience, you lower, not raise, your voice. Katherine Bode-Lang's work is not a trick—her lowered voice kept attracting me."

Mending

I spent that summer tucked behind the library's stacks
with broken books, repairing bends and tatters,
erasing pencil marks, tipping in the missing pages.
Old books, weak and torn books, all came to my table—

covers like rags. I undressed them further: removed
battered cloth with cuts through the spine and name,
down inside joints still holding flapping limbs to well-stitched pages.
Once undone, I would fashion a cast—red, green, black, or blue—

cut cloth and bristol board, build a new spine,
fasten on the covers with a batch of glue I made that week.
The dressing so fitted, I would paint pages back together, layer tissue
over tears, splint the bent corners, slip waxed paper

under the eyelids of the book. In my windowless room,
a ward of old books lay quiet, pinned and drying
between bricks and boards. My handwriting later named them,
numbered and tagged them, sent them back to metal shelves.

Katherine Bode-Lang earned her MFA at Penn State, where she is the assistant director of The Methodology Center. She lives in central Pennsylvania.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780971898196
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	10/07/2014
Series:	APR Honickman 1st Book Prize
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Katherine Bode-Lang: Katherine Bode-Lang was born and raised in western Michigan. Winner of the 2014 APR/Honickman Prize, she earned her MFA at Penn State University, where she is the Assistant Director of The Methodology Center, an NIH-funded research center focused on public health. She lives in central Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

The Dying of the Bees 3

The Reformation 4

She's Heard It Said if It Weren't for the Sky We Would Go Mad 6

Diagnosis 7

My Parents Getting Off the Plane in Guam, 1972 8

Daughter 9

Note to My Cervix 10

October Evening 11

Olbers' Paradox 12

End of Summer 13

September in the East 15

Beauty's Many Absences 16

Autumn Storm 17

Second Note to My Cervix 18

The Pomegranate 19

Sledding in the Cemetery 20

Sanctuary 21

Threshing 23

Snapshots 24

My Father's Fastball 25

Morning Has Broken 27

How Far We'll Go 28

Translation 29

My Husband Mourning 30

The Names of Snow 31

Sorting the Socks of the Dead 32

On the Coast 33

Daughter II 34

Rainy Season 35

Waiting for the Church to Burn 36

That First February 37

The Second Year 38

Spring Melt 39

Notes on the Unseen 41

In the Back Field 42

Letters From the 80th Year: A Found Poem 43

Without Nostalgia 44

Watching the Front Move In 45

Dear Grandmother 46

Family History 48

Love Letters 50

Death in Midsummer 51

When the Angels Go Bowling 52

Passing 53

Pruning 54

When I Miss Paris Most 56

In Drought, In Rain 57

A Poem on Love 58

Wedding Poem 59

Postcard from Star Island 60

Fever 61

Fuse 62

Mending 63

Burden of Proot 64

Marche Funèbre 65

Lament for Pluto 66

The Boys 68

When the Weather Fails Us 70

About the Author 75