Poetry
48 Pages
ISBN-10: 1-59766-023-X
ISBN-13:978-1-59766-023-5
Paper: $19.95
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Wanting Sumptuous Heavens
No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.
Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
There is no end to our grumbling; we want
Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.
But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.
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"Wanting Sumptuous Heavens" appeared in the November 5, 2007, issue of  .
"A few years ago, I began to hear inside the stanza individual sounds such as in or air or ar call to each other," writes Robert Bly in his introductory note to the poems in this collection. "Hearing these cries put me into a new country of poetry. I was not hiking among ideas or images or stories, but among tiny, forceful sounds. What would happen if I adopted in or ar as the center of a poem?"
The result is a new poetic form for which Bly close the name ramage, a term related to the French word rameau, "branch," and echoed in the English "ramify." Sensual, earthy, mystical, and deeply alive, the twenty-four poems in this collection are Bly at his richest and most powerful.
Turkish Pears in August was previously available only in a numbered letterpress edition. The present edition features five elegant wood engravings by artist Gaylord Shanilec. |
Robert Bly lives in Minneapolis with his wife, not far from two sons and four grandchildren. The author of many books, including Light Around the Body, which won the National Book Award, he is the rare poet who earns his living solely by writing and lecturing. |
