Items related to The Note She Left: Poems
Hahn's new collection wrestles with the elemental and enduring challenges of the human condition: What can we use from our spiritual heritage? How should we find relief? How, after it all, do we live? The poems are presented as a letter to the world from a woman preparing to leave it. In four sections - ""The Bells,"" ""The Crosses,"" ""Widdershins,"" and ""Afterwor(l)d"" - she contrasts the hope against the dark that is embodied by an amulet or cross with the abased resignation of torture, failed prayers, and witchcraft. Though Hahn's vision is a dark one, its emotional depth speaks to a human power that, though damaged, can still engage.From ""The Crosses (V)"" - Cross my fingers, cross my heart, arms extended, legs together, not apart, I make of myself a cross. In my pockets bright blue beads, small clay gods, scarabs, four-leaf clovers, bejewelled mezuzahs. In my hat cockleshells to exorcize the demons, to keep hidden the seventh chakra, the tonsure, the bald compulsion. Cross my fingers, cross my heart, arms extended, legs together, not apart. In my ears little bells of confusion to frighten away eyes of the evil. On my breast a foul sachet to repel the lick of the Devil. Cross my fingers, cross my heart. In my window a glass witch ball to guard against the shatter from intruders. Cross my fingers.
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Review:
"In "The Note She Left," Susan Hahn has found a devotional voice at once elegant and spare, as harrowing as the emotional states she explores and as intricately tangled as the ways of knowing and believing she reveals." -Eric J. Sundquist
"What would it say, the note you leave for those you are leaving behind? What would you make of it, were such a note left for you? In the beautiful, harrowing poems that constitute "The Note She Left," Susan Hahn brings us the intimate reaches of a mind under pressure and the systems to which it resorts--talismanic, intercessory, medical, magical--in the effort to conjure protection. I can think of no recent book that testifies more eloquently to the salvific powers of lyric distillation. Nor one that wrests from violence and turmoil so resonant a stillness." -Linda Gregerson
About the Author:
"What would it say, the note you leave for those you are leaving behind? What would you make of it, were such a note left for you? In the beautiful, harrowing poems that constitute "The Note She Left," Susan Hahn brings us the intimate reaches of a mind under pressure and the systems to which it resorts--talismanic, intercessory, medical, magical--in the effort to conjure protection. I can think of no recent book that testifies more eloquently to the salvific powers of lyric distillation. Nor one that wrests from violence and turmoil so resonant a stillness." -Linda Gregerson
Susan Hahn, a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, is the editor of TriQuarterly magazine and the author of seven books of poetry, including Incontinence, Holiday, Mother in Summer, The Scarlet Ibis, and Self/Pity. She lives in Winnetka, Illinois.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherNorthwestern University Press
- Publication date2008
- ISBN 10 0810124866
- ISBN 13 9780810124868
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages88
- Rating
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The Note She Left: Poems
Published by
Northwestern University Press
(2008)
ISBN 10: 0810124866
ISBN 13: 9780810124868
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Hardcover
First Edition
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. There is light shelfwear on the cloth, with the torn remains of a previous seller's tag on the lower end of the back cover, some light smudging parallel to the back spine gutter & the inner lower corners, light bowing of the back cover, light wear on the corners & extremities of the spine,light curling of the lower tips, and a few smudges on the textblock; the book is attractive and otherwise in very good condition with clean print and secure binding. Seller Inventory # 925672
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