Sign-In
Cart
King Baby
Paperback
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9781882295685
Publisher: Alice James Books
Published: Apr 1 2008
Pages: 80
Weight: 0.27
Height: 0.25 Width: 5.45 Depth: 8.52
Language: English
'The story of your creation starts/with a force that wanted something, ' Lia Purpura writes, 'and worked to see if you were it.' A myth of motherhood, a parable of artistic creation, a suite of hymns to an ambiguous emblem, this compelling, Orphic sequence pushes deeply into its chosen vehicle, seeking the diff erence between song and hunger.--Mark Doty
Purpura's charming [third collection]...captures both the fierce love and the flighty weirdness of life with a baby, opting always for the symbolic and the surprising over the literal record...--Publishers Weekly
This book-length sequence is reminiscent of poems by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück, with its hypnotic voice and its otherworldly reach.--Library Journal
In King Baby...Purpura uses the physical as a conduit to the metaphysical; and circles this found fetish in ever-more-incisive gyres, to probe the never-satisfied nature of human yearning...She is particularly effective at distilling those elusive slithers of creative clarity we sometimes experience in our daily lives...Purpura is a wordsmith of the highest order...--Susan McCallum-Smith, WYPR Radio
The poems are exquisitely tender and reverent, each temporarily holding emptiness in place with images and stories, each looking for something that can stand for holiness.--ForeWord Magazine
The poems in King Baby are both folk tales and found objects: every line reaches the page like Pushkin's talking goldfish. A child's discovery of a hand-carved totem frees Purpura from the daily rounds of semiotics. Like the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelof's work, every poem in this collection reminds us that we are each still newly placed among the living.--Stephen Kuusisto
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Alighieri, Dante
Pitavy, Francois
Paperback
Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (by the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Carson, Anne
Paperback
The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (by the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Carson, Anne
Paperback
Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (by the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Carson, Anne
Paperback
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Lao Tzu
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paperback
A Bowl of Goodness: Nourishing Poems with a Side of Soup, Celebrating Community, Friendship, and Resilience
Jackson, Major
Hardcover
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback