Figures for the Ghost: Poems

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Athens, GA, U.S. A 1994 Softcover Near Fine Signed Books. Signed by Author. Size: 8vo-over 7"-9" tall. SIGNED by author on title page. An inscription from Scott on half-title. ... First Printing. 53 pages. A hint of surface rubs. Quantity Available: 1. Signed by Author. ISBN: 0820316016. Inventory No: 004970. Read more Show Less

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Overview

In Figures for the Ghost, Scott Cairns offers postmodern meditations on the problems of epistemology, interpretation and belief. The collection is distinguished by its implicit proposition that uncertainty (or decenteredness) is a pleasurable state. "In their gestures and in their intent, the poems are religious," says Cairns, "but honestly so. Skirting didacticism, they perform a willing trajectory into the unknown."
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More About This Book

Overview

In Figures for the Ghost, Scott Cairns offers postmodern meditations on the problems of epistemology, interpretation and belief. The collection is distinguished by its implicit proposition that uncertainty (or decenteredness) is a pleasurable state. "In their gestures and in their intent, the poems are religious," says Cairns, "but honestly so. Skirting didacticism, they perform a willing trajectory into the unknown."

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
This book of poems is a quiet, thoughtful excavation of the past. The voice of Cairns ( The Translation of Babel ) is conversational and coaxing--confiding in us secrets that seem to be our own. In ``The Turning of Lot's Wife,'' one of the numerous poems in which Cairns adroitly recasts Biblical characters and themes, Lot's wife ``saw that she could / not turn her back on even one doomed child of the city, but / must turn her back instead upon the saved.'' Comfortably weaving between his own personal past, classical myth and Christian theology, Cairns shows a disarming ability to gain the reader's ear with a murmuring tone. Listening, we hear a speaker of wry directness. For example, in ``The History of My Late Progress,'' Cairns describes his own brush with a heart attack: `` I thought I was a goner . / Not really. / No one, I guess, ever really thinks that. / The closest we come is this uncanny, / dispassionate sitting-back, just watching / to see how we'll be saved.'' At times, his lines lose their tightness and fall toward prose. But Figures for the Ghost is the work of a writer who seems to have spent a long time listening before reporting what he has heard. (Apr.)

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780820316017
  • Publisher: University of Georgia Press
  • Publication date: 6/1/1994
  • Pages: 72
  • Series: Contemporary Poetry Ser.
  • Product dimensions: 5.53 (w) x 8.54 (h) x 0.23 (d)

Table of Contents

Inscription 1
The Holy Ghost 5
Return Directive 7
Prospect of the Interior 8
The Glass Man 9
Serenade 10
The Death of Penelope 11
Herod 13
Advent 15
City Under Construction 16
The Lie of the Future 18
The History of My Late Progress 19
The Beginning of the World 21
Murmur 23
Dead Sea Bathers 24
The Turning of Lot's Wife 25
On the Holy Spirit 29
The Embarrassment of Last Things 30
Sacraments 31
The Communion of the Body 32
Angels 34
Satan 35
Baptism 36
Blood Atonement 37
Grace 38
A Recuperation of Sin 39
Pain 40
The End of Heaven and the End of Hell 41
And Also from the Son 45
Late Epistle 47
Mortuary Art 52
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