Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Opium and Ambergris

Opium and Ambergris

Chin, Marilyn
Dekeersgieter, Colin

Paperback

Series: Wick First Book

General Poetry

Publisher Price: $18.00

ISBN10: 1606354833
ISBN13: 9781606354834
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Published: Sep 17 2024
Pages: 72
Weight: 0.24
Height: 0.27 Width: 5.74 Depth: 8.47
Language: English

Winner of the 2023 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize

Opium and Ambergris is the haunting debut collection by poet Colin Dekeersgieter, whose lyric poems scrutinize a family's history with addiction, death, and mental illness. Reeling from the loss of his brother to a heroin overdose, Dekeersgieter grieves while doing his best to keep his suicidal mother alive and raise his family. As a result, these poems shift between historical retellings and urgent examinations of love. In the title poem, opium is associated with death and ambergris--a substance formed in sperm whales' digestive tracts and valued by many cultures for over one thousand years--is associated with love. As family history, death, trauma, and duty become entwined with the acts of living, suffering, growing, and writing, these metaphorical categories become essentially interchangeable. Opium comes from the beautiful poppy; ambergris is an ingredient still used in high-end perfumes to help the fragrance last longer, yet it is extracted from dead whales. Thus, opium and ambergris come to represent the possible coexistence of love and loss.

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