Granted

by Mary Szybist

Overview

Using natural, biblical, and classical imagery, these poems explore the difficulties of faith and love—particularly the difficulties of their expression, their performance. Moving between dramatic and interior monologue, and moving through intersecting histories, the ambiguities of inwardness and the eros of wakeful existence, these poems search for relationships with self, others, the world and God that are authentic—however quirky or strange.

"This is poetry of a rare fine delicacy. Its very modesty testifies to a great ambition—to overcome by the quietest of means."—Donald Justice

In Tennessee I Found a Firefly
Flashing in the grass; the mouth of a spider clung
to the dark of it: the legs of the spider
held the tucked wings close,
held the abdomen still in the midst of calling
with thrusts of phosphorescent light—

When I am tired of being human, I try to remember
the two stuck together like burrs. I try to place them
central in my mind where everything else must
surround them, must see the burr and the barb of them.
There is courtship, and there is hunger. I suppose
there are grips from which even angels cannot fly.
Even imagined ones. Luciferin, luciferase.
When I am tired of only touching,
I have my mouth to try to tell you
what, in your arms, is not erased

"This is poetry of a rare fine delicacy. Its very modesty testifies to a great ambition—to overcome by the quietest of means."—Donald Justice

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781882295371
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	04/01/2003
Pages:	80
Sales rank:	913,955
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.30(d)

Table of Contents

Contents

Mutatis Mutandis.......................................................1
What If I Could Look at You............................................2
Naked and Unashamed Are Two Different Moments..........................4
Swamp..................................................................5
What the World Is For..................................................6
Raiment................................................................8
Idealized Head.........................................................9
Twelfth Night from the Willow Cabin....................................10
First Confession.......................................................12
His Animals............................................................13
Long After the Donkey and Desert.......................................14
When I Was a Spoon in My Mother's Kitchen..............................16
Crylight...............................................................18
Via Negativa...........................................................19
Monologue to be Spoken by an Archangel.................................20
Again, the Body as Temple..............................................21
Script Says Cry........................................................23
Against Bitterness.....................................................24
In the Glare of the Garden.............................................26
Response to Sunlight...................................................27
First Mardi Gras.......................................................28
The Way One Picks Up a Shell on the Beach..............................30
The Mouths of Carp.....................................................31
Approaching Elegy......................................................32
Heaven in Miniature....................................................34
Withdrawal.............................................................36
Apology................................................................38
On Gravity.............................................................39
Train Station, Reno: Early December....................................40
"... What a Lovely Way You Have of Putting Things".....................42
Our Lady of the Milk...................................................43
The Technique of the Lifelike..........................................44
The Waiting............................................................45
Wafian as in Waven as in Wif...........................................47
Self-Portrait with a Bee in My Mouth...................................49
Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants.............................51
In Tennessee I Found a Firefly.........................................54
NOTES..................................................................57

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the 2002 Beatrice Hawley Award, Szybist here looks at the connecting power of prayer; the best of these 37 poems express an almost intimate relationship between the poet and the sacred. Using free verse (the two formal poems are less successful), she writes from her own perspective and that of Jesus Christ; his mother, Mary; and the Archangel Gabriel, making the book resemble a polyphonic hymn. Using fresh metaphors-"When I consider the body in the manger/ I feel it on my face"; "a prayer of high-rouged cheekbones"-Szybist examines spiritual states from longing to abandonment to ecstasy. Her most evocative poem, "Script Says Cry," suggests those states and is written in two voices. The first is that of Jesus Christ, as he hangs on the cross, with his thoughts taking him past this moment of abandonment to the poet, whose longing and ecstasy form the second voice. As these poems spring from the deepest recesses of the poet's psyche, reading them at times feels like an intrusion. This fine first book is recommended for public and academic libraries.-Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

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