Catastrophic Bliss

by Myronn Hardy

Overview

Catastrophic Bliss contemplates the longing to understand connections and disconnections within a world ever more fragmented yet interdependent. With allusions to Dante, Stevie Wonder, Fernando Pessoa, Persephone and Marianne Moore, these poems move from the tumultuous to the sublime: a pit bull killing an invading thief, two people on a New York City subway playing chess, Billy Eckstine recording in Rio de Janeiro, to an imagined Barack Obama writing poems to his father. Myronn Hardy’s third collection comprises war, place, love, and history all yearning to be reconciled.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611484939
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/27/2012
Series:	The Griot Project Book Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Myronn Hardy is the author of two previous books of poetry. Hedivides his time between New York City and Morocco.

Table of Contents

Catastrophic Bliss
Reticence
The Walk
Making Stars with Jacob Lawrence
This Train Seeks Dust
Linens Near a Ghost Town
Habits
Jaguaripe
Removing Atmosphere: A Seascape
The Gold Room
Playing Chess on the A
Aubade: Blue Hydrangeas
Peaches
Oba's Stew
The Sermon
Communion
Birthday Fish
The Lion
Friday Night Sighting
Graze for the Captain
Three
The Saved
Blackberries
Robiezene’s Circle
The Telling
The Raft with Machado de Assis
Chemotherapy Moon
What the Tide Leaves
Wine on King Street
Madrugada
Mucambo
Rocket
Grenades
Two Baianas Beckon Sorrow
Felipe Loves Marilyn
River Tracks
Boa Morte
Redux
The Resolved
Exú
Retonados
Platoon
Rhythm in the Republic: Mr. President
Samba
Billy Eckstine’s Felicidade: Rio de Janeiro, 1963
Fado: Facing the Salon
Fado: Sunset
Fado: After the Ballet
Disiz La Peste: An Interview
Insha’Allah
Undertones
Weekend
The Pulse
Crabs Fixate on Red
Notes
Acknowledgments
Author Biography
The Griot-Stadler Prize for Poetry

What People are Saying About This

Michael Collier

“The only medicine is the voice,” Myronn Hardy tells us in his vivid and eloquent new collection of poems, Catastrophic Bliss, and what he tries to mend by speaking are the fractured cultures and landscapes that haunt contemporary consciousness. Hardy’s “voice” sings with fresh and arresting observations—“stingrays with pale/ undersides like hands”—and through them he explores the fragile co-existence of man and nature—the bliss of it and the catastrophe.

Alan Shapiro

Myronn Hardy’s Catastrophic Bliss is a book of double exposures: whether his landscape is Africa, Spain, or North America, his landscapes are haunted by history, by other times and other places. History in these beautiful poems is both a blessing and a curse, a burden one can neither cast off nor carry. And while Hardy understands that there is no "sweetness without toil," he honors the toil by presenting the sweetness as a poor exchange, however necessary, for all the suffering behind it. This is a complicated, mature collection, a collection for adults.

Editorial Reviews

Myronn Hardy’s Catastrophic Bliss is a book of double exposures: whether his landscape is Africa, Spain, or North America, his landscapes are haunted by history, by other times and other places. History in these beautiful poems is both a blessing and a curse, a burden one can neither cast off nor carry. And while Hardy understands that there is no "sweetness without toil," he honors the toil by presenting the sweetness as a poor exchange, however necessary, for all the suffering behind it. This is a complicated, mature collection, a collection for adults.

Alan Shapiro

The only medicine is the voice,” Myronn Hardy tells us in his vivid and eloquent new collection of poems, Catastrophic Bliss, and what he tries to mend by speaking are the fractured cultures and landscapes that haunt contemporary consciousness. Hardy’s “voice” sings with fresh and arresting observations—“stingrays with pale/ undersides like hands”—and through them he explores the fragile co-existence of man and nature—the bliss of it and the catastrophe.

Michael Collier