The Backlit Hour
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Whether silently coveting the birthday gifts of a privileged classmate, trying to connect with a mother's ghost-like presence, or interrogating the dehumanizing impulse of an Arizona minuteman, the speaker of these poems often finds himself on the "wrong" side of the border that delineates a space of belonging, marginalized or estranged from his surroundings, observing the Other with a sense of both awe and bewilderment. As such, the poems invite the reader to consider the relationship between life observed and life lived, between detachment and experience, between at-homeness and exile. In the poem "Backlit", for example, the speaker is transfixed by the darkening silhouette of a loved one standing before a window, this presence becoming an absence in the shape of a human body; he thinks to speak but doesn't, foreshadowing the final poem about an intimate friend coming to terms with his imminent mortality through the quiet contemplation of an possum's skeleton. These poems, navigating a landscape marked by political, physical, and emotional trauma, ultimately point to the potential of the sensual self - of touch - to transcend the limits of language.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:1622880048
ISBN13:9781622880041
Release Date:February 2013
Publisher:Stephen F. Austin University Press
Length:88 Pages
Weight:0.29 lbs.
Dimensions:0.2" x 5.5" x 8.5"
Age Range:17 years and up
Grade Range:Grade 12 and higher
Related Subjects
PoetryCustomer Reviews
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