Heartworm: Poems - Softcover

Scheffler, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0913785601 ISBN 13: 9780913785607

Publisher: Moon City Press, 2023

Synopsis

Winner of the 2021 Moon City Poetry Award

Imagine a keen eye and spritely intellect turned toward this thread-worn world. Heartworm, Adam Scheffler's second full-length poetry collection, gives readers exactly that. An example: The poem "Advice from a Dog" translates wisdom from, yes, a dog, beginning with the exhortation to "Piss expressively." From there, however, the poem gets to the literal heart of the matter, commanding, "[S]mell also the worms coiled up in / the human heart, thousands." But maybe you're not a dog person. "For I Will Consider This Cockroach Belinda" is a contemporary reworking of "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry" by eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart. Here, Scheffler praises Belinda, found in his sink "like a tiny Vishnu waving her many arms," or creeping up the curved wall of the sink "like a monk in silence." It doesn't matter what the world gives him; Scheffler pays attention - takes notes and shows up to the test prepared. Heartworm's forty-two poems send countless pricks and wriggles through the chest cavity as they ruminate on racehorses, ghosts, mosquitos, Zambonis, Mondays ... the ordinary and often devastating stuff of our lives.

Edition details

• Publisher: Moon City Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0913785601
• ISBN 13: 9780913785607
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 70