We, the Almighty Fires

by Anna Rose Welch

Overview

These thought-provoking and spiritual poems focus on faith, relationships, and the role of God in life and in the bedroom. Female empowerment is at the heart of this collection, as well as perceptions of humanity as beings full of light.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938584756
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	04/17/2018
Pages:	100
Sales rank:	1,292,190
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.30(d)

Editorial Reviews

07/16/2018
Welch digs deep into desire, origin, and the chaos of creation in a debut collection of rich, sensuous poems that juxtapose scriptural material with the sexual. Here, the stories of the Book of Genesis blend with such other texts as Wilhelm Reich’s psychoanalytic writings on the function of the orgasm. “Picture the darkest place inside a man’s body and you’ll know what he lost to create you,” Welch writes. Her poem “Desire” begins with an exhilarating declaration: “This is how it is: the smallest body wracked/ with song. Picture a stained glass window shattering/ to let loose hymns.” Over and over again, Welch reveals the depth and disarray of longing. Sometimes this takes the form of “a wave shoaling, seducing a clinker-built ship ashore,” while elsewhere it emerges from the mouth of Noah’s wife, who observes that “To desire another is to lose your wits./ To lose your wits is to know God’s hands.” Refreshingly, these poems celebrate this need rather than coat it with layers of guilt: “I’ve counted my sins/ like quarters; I’ve learned my worth.” If bodies are “open cages for others to dart into,” as Welch claims, she shows that in luring others to oneself it is always possible to be “guilty of being too luminous.” (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Anna Rose Welch's We, the Almighty Fires is a testament to poetry's ability to render the body's erasure through verbal beauty and grace. There is a keen attention to music in these poems—a crafting of sound as sturdy as an ark in a biblical flood and as obsessive as the water's recursive singing. Sensual and smart, Welch's debut collection blazes with wild splendor." —Eugene Gloria


"The terms of worship in Anna Rose Welch's first book are by turns erotic and elegiac: both the body and the page are sites of prayer." Welch's poems seek out desires and histories too long submerged, if not already lost, and she reclaims them in a series of gorgeous apocrypha."What results is this sexy reliquary, these poems that threaten to catch fire as soon you read them." —Christopher Bakken

From the Publisher

Read More