Paradise

by Victoria Redel

Overview

Rewriting Eden, Victoria Redel interrogates the idea of paradise within the historical context of borders, exile, and diaspora that brought us to the present global migration crisis. Drawing from a long family history of flight and refuge, the poems in Paradise interweave religion and myth, personal lore and nation-building, borders actual and imagined. They ask: What if what we fell from was never, actually, grace? What is a boundary, really? Redel navigates geopolitical perimeters while also questioning the border between the living and the dead and delineating the migrations aging women make in their bodies and lives. With stark lyricism and unflinching attention, Paradise considers how a legacy of trauma shapes imagination and asks readers to see the threads that tie contemporary catastrophes to the exigencies and flight paths that made us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954245136
Publisher:	Four Way Books
Publication date:	02/15/2022
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Victoria Redel is the author of three previous collections of poetry and five books of fiction. A former recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, she teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Read an Excerpt

"The Border"

There was a gate & through the gate
another garden—

same grasses, clover, gentian violet & lily
& the dry winds also made those willows sway—

just that rusty gate—
the dirt beneath scraped when it hinged open and shut—

& some claimed one side was Paradise.

Table of Contents

1

The Border 3

Garden 4

Dominion 5

Sixth Day 6

Temptation 7

Origin 8

You Called It Paradise 9

Exodus 10

Refugees 12

We Petition You, Sirs, 13

The Other Child 14

Humankind Sonnets, a Grammar 15

Babel 18

Speaking of Men 19

Tributary 20

If You Knew 22

Assimilation 24

Lucky Dog 25

Last Picnic, Galati 26

A True Story 27

Occupation 30

Getting Close 32

Another Long Story 34

Expulsion 35

Alexandria 36

They Had No Choice 37

Ordinary Sight 38

Exile Fragment 41

Siege 42

Last Days 43

Unto 44

The Immigrant's Last Task 45

2

The Psychic 49

Snake 50

Bearded Iris 51

Brace 52

On the Matter of Creation 54

Stuck Human 56

Mount Lafayette Elegy, 1982 57

Poppies 59

Just When Everything Human Seemed Impossible, the Birds Arrived 60

Then 61

& This World 62

Direction 63

Pleasure 64

Without Refuge 65

The In-between 66

Envy, 2020 67

Ode after Menopause 68

Only Paradise 71

Do Over 72

Even Then 73

Another Garden 74

Notes