The Fraud of Good Sleep (Salt Modern Poets) - Softcover

Theis, Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844718794 ISBN 13: 9781844718795

Publisher: Salt, 2011

Synopsis

The Fraud of Good Sleep is a book of “serious humanist” poems. Theis’s poems combine a stunning, classical rigor with a passionate madness that is utterly contemporary and surprising. Charting the magic arc of a modern love story on a banjo string or through birch-white epistles left behind at a deserted campsite, these poems engage in the oblivion of snow, intoxicants, and broken-heartedness since living includes loving where “destruction be our lot.” It’s a place where fortunes are told: “Degenerate fruit and burned apple wood. / The impure equals the fertile plain.” From prose poems and extended lyric sequences to translations and fragments, this book attempts to enfold the living past into the insane present. Or, what you might call “the wild hunt to baptize the dead.”

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1977 in New York, Catherine Theis grew up outside Chicago and spent her summers in Sicily with her family. She attended the University of Vermont where she received a Rubin Writer Award which allowed her to take graduate courses in creative writing at Hollins University. While in college, she studied at the University of Padua, Italy, and received a Buckham Scholarship Award to study at the University at Kent in England.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Possibility of a Sacred Wood

I held it―

whatever it was, and the rotted plant stems

rotted out some more until

the sky broke with attitude

and all the old plant debris flew up,

out of my hands, disappearing on a wind

suddenly present, a thunder squall passing into sense.

The light reflected in the window, white

with honey cuts of red.

I hear a train passing, its whistle attractive.

I turn my face when the train passes―

ways to capture light―where we are.

The music beginning and ending without effort.

Edition details

• Publisher: Salt
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1844718794
• ISBN 13: 9781844718795
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80