Blood Labors

by Daniel Tobin

Overview

The title Blood Labors is a double entendre: labors as both the thing and the action. Split into four sections, which act as musical movements more than section breaks, there are poems about space and matter, the human impulse to create, and the artist’s work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945588198
Publisher:	Four Way Books
Publication date:	09/04/2018
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Daniel Tobin is the author of seven previous books of poems, most recently the book-length poem From Nothing (Four Way Books 2016). He has received the “Discovery”/The Nation Award, The Robert Penn Warren Award, The Greensboro Review Prize, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, the Julia Ward Howe Award, and creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.  He lives in Boston, MA and teaches at Emerson College.

Table of Contents

Gravesend 3

*

The Origamist 7

In the Beginning 10

Blood Labors 12

Reading Meister Eckhart at the Rock Bottom Bar 13

Hölderlin in Springtime 17

Canticle 23

A Bic 25

Triptych, Somewhat Metaphysical 27

Ode to the Google Maps Man 31

Mount of Olives 35

Corpse Flower, Luna Moth 37

*

The Bone Flute 43

With the Gift of a Shell at H.D.'s Grave 45

A Parting Glass 49

True West 52

Station of the Retro 54

Concert 56

Alchemical Meditation 58

In Escher's Rooms 60

Frond 63

The Creature Has a Purpose 66

*

Downstream 73

*

Early Sunday Morning on the White Pages 87

Quissett 92

Reflective 93

Of Gods and Men and Monsters 94

The Kingdom of God Is 97

Arrow of Time 99

Spontaneous 105

Bulk 107

La Cicada Familia 109

The Eye 113

Descending Figures 116

Gravity 118

That Is to Say 119

Notes

What People are Saying About This

Barbara Ras

“Blood Labors is an ebullient and ecclesiastical wonder, capturing more of creation, the uncreated, and recreated than any dozen books on a poetry shelf. Tobin weaves the deep-world-time of Charles Olson with the Irish Catholic lyricism of Seamus Heaney, resulting in poems as startling—and essential—as water. Of the abundance to praise in this book, let me single out the twelve poems in “Downstream”—a reverie, an origin myth, a surreal awakening—written with uncanny, terrifying beauty. All told, Blood Labors dazzles with its brilliance.”

Editorial Reviews

"...Tobin has written smartly on Irish poets like Seamus Heaney, and that connection emerges to appealing effect in the robust, formally dexterous writing in 'Blood Labors.'..." From The Best Poetry of 2018

The New York Times - David Orr