The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible

by Walter Wangerin Jr., Scott Cairns (Preface by)

Overview

The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible is a volume of poems divided into three parts. The three parts are bound together by a brace of persistent and developing themes, as well as by the repetition (and the development) of language, metaphor, and imagery. Part 1 presents various characters (mostly African American) confronting death. The poems in part 2 are spoken by an unnamed narrator about his cancer. My cancer, actually, and my experiences. Parts 2 and 3 both descend into silence. Part 3 is a radical reworking of the ancient Mesopotamian epic loosely known as The Songs of Heaven and Hell. The poems are not a translation, though each derives from a separate song, and each uses the characters, the events, the worldview, and the stark imagery of Babylon in the third century BCE. In many respects, these poems have the prosody of the biblical psalms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498240611
Publisher:	Cascade Books
Publication date:	05/31/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	94
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Walter Wangerin Jr. has won the National Book Award, the New York Times Best Children's Book of the Year Award, and several Gold Medallion Awards, including best fiction awards for both The Book of God (1997) and Paul: A Novel (2000). Wangerin was speaker for the Lutheran Vespers radio program from 1994 to January 2005, and prior to joining the faculty at Valparaiso University, he served as an inner-city pastor in Evansville, Indiana, for sixteen years. The author of more than forty books, Wangerin lives in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he is Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University.

Table of Contents

Foreword Scott Cairns vii

Adams' Photograph of Stieglitz 1

Part 1 Snow

Cones of Snow 7

Milk and Snow in Three Declensions 9

A Torque of Time 14

Gertrude's Letter, Midwinter 15

Miz Lillian's Memorial Stones 18

Et in Pacem 23

Part 2 Cancer

I On an Age-Old Anvil, Wince and Sing 27

II Pain 28

III November 30

IV The Wanderer 31

V The better metaphor 32

VI Advice 34

VII Endnote 36

VIII Zero at the Bone 37

IX Slow time 41

X Time's Gyre 43

XI Necrophagia: The Mastery of the Thing 44

XII The Effects of Radiation 45

XIII To Those I Haven't Time to Write 46

XIV 47

XV 48

Part 3 O Babylon!

From the Mesopotamian Poems of Heaven and Hell 51

II From The Hymn of the Names of Marduk 59

III From A Prayer to the Gods of Night 61

IV From Childbirth 63

V From Inanna's Journey into Hell 68

VI From Dumuzi Mourned 80

VII From The Son's Reply 83

VIII 84