The Oval Hour

by Kathleen Peirce

Overview

In The Oval Hour Kathleen Peirce addresses the vulnerability of language—which is to say the vulnerability of our reality—when we are in extreme states of desire and loss, especially erotic desire and erotic loss. Central to the book is its series of "Confessions," twenty formally similar poems that contend with the Confessions of Saint Augustine.“Passing through innocence, I came either to experience / or guilt, or they came to me, displacing innocence”: these luminous poems explore the generation and overlapping of carnal and metaphysical identities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587293030
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	03/01/1999
Series:	Iowa Poetry Prize
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	84
File size:	352 KB

About the Author

Kathleen Peirce teaches in the MFA program at Southwest Texas State University. Her first book, Mercy, won the Associated Writing Programs Award for poetry in 1990. She received a Whiting Writers Award in 1993.

Table of Contents

Contents
Ovidian
Nearness and Entrance
Confession 1.8.13
Nude against the Light
Confession 10.8.13
Confession 4.2.3
Confession 1.13.20
Pygmalion in March
Evening Poem
Two Sisters
Figure with Trees
Thimble Forest
Mirror Forest
Seahorse Forest
Confession 2.5.10
Jessamine
Of the Veritable Ocean
Grief
Mother and Son
Confession 12.6.6
Red
Wren
Confession 7.5.7
Expulsion and Annunciation
Dyke Breach
Confession 11.19.25
Butterfly House
Confession 9.4.10
Dreaming All Night
Confession 3.10.18
The Dead
Promesa
Homage to the Romantic Ballet
Thought Might Nod in Waves
Edenic
Pietà
Confession 11.11.13
Confession 11.23.29
Person, Place, Gesture, Thing
Five-Part Question
Round
A Trade
Divided Touch, Divided Color
Confession 9.10.25
First Lines
Riddles
Poem in Summer
Confession 2.6.12
Personae Separatae
Confession 3.2.2
Self-Portrait as Landscape
Mountain Laurel
Amaranth
Confession 4.13.20
Grace
Poem
Confession 7.21.27
Her Sleep
His Watching
Confession 8.1.2
Heav'n Hides Nothing from Thy View
Taking Pleasure
The Many Colors
Confession 8.9.21
Confession 13.9.10
Notes

What People are Saying About This

Richard Howard

There is an overtone of Christina Rossetti in these poems, partly discernible in the hindered devotions of the 'Confessions' series and partly in the unresisted sensuality of the poems about (largely) women. 'Two Sisters' is the most disconcerting poem in this line since Goblin Market. Peirce has emotional authority and intellectual passion -- an inevitable triumph.