Sanskrit of the Body

by W. B. Keckler

Overview

In this mesmerizing collection, W. B. Keckler crafts an expansive travelogue of the human spirit that moves thoughtfully through multiple ages, cultures, and beings. Each brief poem explores in depth, through pensive, evocative images, aspects of the human condition and their place within the rich continuum of animal existence. Keckler presents these poems in a fugal form, uniting the individual works in what the poet describes as a "holistic formalism" that reveals the poems' powerful collective meaning. Lives and afterlives are explored with equal care as Keckler attempts to restore the concept of "spirit" in a modern world often overwhelmed by materialistic priorities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142003039
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/27/2003
Series:	Penguin Poets
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

W. B. Keckler's poetry, prose, and verbo-visual art have appeared in several hundred magazines here and abroad since 1990. Keckler is also a playwright and has written several screenplays. His poetry and plays have received many accolades, including two Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry.

Table of Contents

Sanskrit of the BodySanskrit Of The Body
"A small boy amuses himself"
"A rose over mica-flecked sand nods"
"This way her galaxy of mind shuts off"
"The rairoad tracks recede in a pale blue"
"The pigeons fake an Annunciation in this shadow"
"She talks to herself all night"
"Which are the stories you keep"
"How old is this darkness anyway?"
"Plant ghosts signal fractally to us"
"Now you walk the floors of public institutions"
"Drunken boaters who land there all summer"
"When your spine's magnesium finally ignites"
"I wrestle with many problems, lately"
"There stands a column of salt in desert"
"Crickets outside tonight speak to stars"
"Mourning doves purr in a slant of morning dark"
"It is an odd joy to read writing predating"
"The privacy of a penitentiary that shadows"
"They have adapted cold electricity"
"Sorrow is revealed here in the spectral energy"

A Whale's Fin, An Ibis Wing, A Leaf
"And then you divide again, as water"
"All of this happened with a nebulous sense of space"
"It is because of this, a candle's flickering"
"Our differing voice patterns and weights"
"Sun left floaters, spangled fire"
"Spun-out obsidian wires vex a city"
"The lover, he is beginning to build a bridge"
"Another false start, the way mosaics"
"The distance between the rails of a railroad"
"I think my answer to the soul is the epidermis"
"All afternoon and blue evening"
"Why worry about distinctions when the train"
"Ants kept coming out of the tap marked "C"
"And then she thought, yes, life consists only of that"
"She woke up with the idea of an owl"
"Because you want a body's shadow on this white paper"
"A familiar voice may be parsed to infinite particles"
"I have fallen, but do not help me"
"You come to agree with the fish imagery"

The Spider Carries Nothing But Hunger
The Hand
The Library
A Poem I Later Realized is about Arshile Gorky
Naturopathy
Altered Bronk
Morning Rain Ticking
Just Watching As
Variant
In Beginning
Theater in the New World
Seams
2:29 A.M.
You Were Thinking How
The Gods

American Nocturne
"A kinetic sculpture is mounted"
"A tiny mechanical biplane circles a planet"
"Inside, it feels as though every room"
"Parrots in her yellow window"
"A moth splays against an apartment window"
"Someone shoves a little boat into the winter river"
"A hand goes deeper inside the nude"
"Sugar spills on a Ouija board"

After
"A Wedding"