Poems
by Laurie Kutchins
American
Poets Continuum Series
The
poems in Laurie Kutchins' new collection sustain the lyric and
imagistic sensibility of her last book, The Night Path,
but depart significantly from it in narrative, structure, voice,
and topic. The poems in Slope of the Child Everlasting
grew out of extended scrutiny of master poets--Matsuo Basho,
Elizabeth Bishop, Garcia Lorca, Rainer Maria Rilke, Li Po, and
others--as Kutchins searched for forms and voices to express
post-September 11 rupture.
The book's central
images and voices are archetypes--who "do their work"
largely from the soundings of the unconscious. Kutchins employs
forms, including haiku, renga, sestina, and ghazal, to present
a wide range of characters drawn from memory and her imagination.
The mountains, the great divide, the river, the owl and the
blind man all visit the Underworld. From their journey to this
fertile mythic darkness, these characters claim their futures
through visions of the past--the urge of the bloodroot.
Togwotee
Atop
this white divide be still, be the horned owl after hunger.
Marry
my little ear to a stone in the wind's two-ocean river.
Churn
me open, spawn of death, spine of summer thunder.
Bring
mud and hummingbird back to rock, cloud, river.
Then
teach me winter. Let me learn leaving and returning are the
same
Yearning
of breath: you can go anywhere from here murmurs upriver.
Remember
mother-of-pearl, father wading out to fish the sandbar.
Remember
silt and eggs, the child of clay, the slope below the river.
Let
mouth be our meeting, brother to the ocean's inland quiver,
Sister
into snow driven seven directions down river.
Copyright © 2007 by BOA Editions
Available editions:
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Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-929918-91-1
Price: $15.50
Publishing Date: May 2007
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BOA Editions, Ltd. would like to thank the following generous Publishing Partners for their support of Slope of the Child Everlasting:
Anonymous (6)
Nancy & Alan Cameros
Craig Challender
Gwen & Gary Conners
Margaret E. Cronin
Susan DeWitt Davie
Peter & Sue Durant
Pete & Bev French
Dane & Judy Gordon
Kip & Deb Hale
Robin & Peter Hursh
Richard & Catherine Massie
Stanley D. McKenzie
Boo Poulin
Deborah Ronnen
Thomas R. Ward in memory of Jane Buell Ward
Mike & Pat Wilder
Glenn & Helen William
