Dog Angel: Poems

by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Overview

Jesse Lee Kercheval writes with wit, vivid language, and devastating honesty in these autobiographical poems. Tracing the timelines of her life forward and backward, she offers a moving examination of the role of family and the possible/probable/hoped for existence of God—and how our perceptions of the divine can be transformed from a kindergartner’s dyslexically scrawled "doG loves U" to the ever—present but oft—ignored Dog Angel of the title. Ranging from a cross—country drive to bury her mother’s ashes at Arlington National Cemetery, to a family vacation in Spain, to an imagined final exam given by her children, Kercheval explores the vagaries of love, loss, faith, grief, and joy with a calm, convincing wisdom that permeates this resonant and wonderful collection.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822958406
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	03/21/2004
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.27(d)

About the Author

Jesse Lee Kercheval is a poet, writer, and translator, specializing in Uruguayan poetry. She is the author of America that island off the coast of France and Dog Angel and the translator of Love Poems by Idea Vilariño and The Invisible Bridge: Selected Poems of Circe Maia. A bilingual Spanish—English edition of her selected poems, La crisis es el cuerpo, translated by Ezequiel Zaidenwerg, was published in Argentina and is forthcoming in Mexico. She is also the author of the Alex Award–winning memoir Space and the short story collection Underground Women.

Table of Contents

I
	Enter Mecca	3
II
	Not	7
	The Rented Car	9
	Olive	12
	Happy Hour	13
	The Hotel Where My Family Used to Stay	15
	Once Upon a Time I Had a White Comb	16
	I Open Your Death Like a Book	18
	Rose Red	20
	Bread	21
	Blue Plate	23
III
	Notes from a Lecture on Rilke's Requiems	27
IV
	16 Hours in Bradford, Pennsylvania	35
V
	In the Gardens of the Alcazar	45
	Magdalena at the Prado	46
	What Max, Age Two, Remembers about Spain	48
	La Festividad de los Tres Reyes	50
	Florida	54
	The Steeplejack	56
	3 Reflections God Might See in My Living-Room Window	58
	Clocks	60
	When the dead come back	62
	Pump	65
	Small Treatise on the Usefulness of Language	67
	August in My Neighbor's Garden	68
	I Dream My Children Are Giving Me a Final Exam	70
VI
	The Great Molasses Flood	73