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
Strange Hymn: Poems

Strange Hymn: Poems

Kucharczyk, Carlene

Paperback

Series: Juniper Prize for Poetry

General Poetry

ISBN10: 1625348649
ISBN13: 9781625348647
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Published: Apr 4 2025
Pages: 80
Weight: 0.25
Height: 0.30 Width: 5.30 Depth: 8.10
Language: English

I'll tell you everything I know. Though there might not be much to tell, confesses the speaker in Strange Hymn by Carlene Kucharczyk, in a meticulously crafted lyrical journey exploring morality and humanity. The poems here grapple with understanding physical loss: I wanted / to know at once and definitively our animal bodies / were not all we were. It is shameful to be this fragile. They also engage with the more abstract slipping away of memory and time: Since I was born, I have been forgetting. Forgetting what I have wanted to remember. Kucharczyk's insightful poems blur the lines between history and myth, love and grief, song and silence.

Caught between lamenting the passage of time and rejoicing in small beauties, she writes, I tell you, I wish we could stay here longer / in this hotel of lost grandeur, this palace of interesting disarray, / and stay here with these pieces of the impersonal past / that have somehow not yet outlasted their small lights. Each moment reflects on our ephemeral lives from musings on art and nature to reflections on the self, asking Is a mirror a sort of glass house? / And, is there a way to see ourselves besides through the glass?

As readers traverse this collection, they learn how the body sings, the many iterations of Mary, what sirens truly think of Odysseus, how a Morning Glory unfurls, and lessons in orthodontics, but most importantly, how to live with absence. Kucharczyk is a master of manipulating time and space through her dynamic use of form, creating a narrative that begs, After I'm gone, don't bury my body-- / Burn it, and turn it into song.

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