The Seconds
For six months, Philip V of Spain remained in his room, suffering from deep melancholia. Obsessed with time and mortality, he surrounded himself with clocks, their regular motions helping to keep the madness at bay. Then one evening, from just outside his window, he heard the voice of the castrato Farinelli singing an aria by Hasse. The music so soothed him that he summoned Farinelli to sing the aria nightly for the next two years. The aria's words wind through Linda Bierds's new collection and out through the centuries, passing in their journey two dozen lives, real and imagined. They are vulnerable, triumphant, injured, mortal. Aware of the body as a frail container for the soul, they wait together like seconds in some grand duel between time and immortality. In this new work, Bierds looks at 'seconds' in all its meanings as particles of time, as stand-ins for someone else's battles, as damaged goods. The poems in The Seconds link one to another through imagery, language, and metaphor, but it is the richness of imagination that makes them haunting.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0399147977
ISBN13:9780399147975
Release Date:October 2001
Publisher:Putnam Adult
Length:88 Pages
Weight:0.30 lbs.
Dimensions:0.3" x 5.4" x 8.2"
Age Range:18 years and up
Grade Range:Postsecondary and higher
Related Subjects
PoetryCustomer Reviews
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Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 15 years ago
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