Every Ravening Thing bookcover

Every Ravening Thing

Poems
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Description

Author of two previous collections of poetry: BLACK HOPE (1997) and ANTIDOTE FOR NIGHT (2015). de la O is also the publisher of the journal ASKEW. Keats at Fourteen She dozes, her nails fretted against the linen's border, a hectic rose flaming each cheek. Her lips move, no words. The boy is guardian spirit, no one but he enters this sickroom where his mother fades, home finally after six years--failures, disgrace. Scarlet daughter, neighbors hiss, slave to appetite, but John is single-minded--she will live. No one but he gives her the tincture of mercury--one tenth of a grain daily, dabs the sweat of her fevers away, a basket of withered poppies at his feet. He pierces each capsule with a needle, drops it in a small glazed crock to warm near the stove, sweat out the opium. Then he'll add wine, saffron, nutmeg. It takes time, the hour darkens. He cups his hand to light the votive. She moans a furred voice from webbed lungs, a cup of black blood brimming, the pilgrim is fleeing the City, he leans in closer, the City of Destruction, takes her clammy hand, that place also where he was born, so close now he's breathing her, "Johnny, " she cries, "lift me up, Johnny, your father is here in the room.

Product Details

PublisherUniversity of Pittsburgh Press
Publish DateApril 02, 2019
Pages88
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9780822965756
Dimensions8.9 X 5.9 X 0.4 inches | 0.3 pounds
BISAC Categories: Poetry, Poetry

About the Author

Marsha de la O is a lecturer in the English Department at California State University, Channel Islands, where she teaches poetry and creative writing. She is the author of Every Ravening Thing, Antidote for Night, and Black Hope. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, The Slowdown, and many journals, and she is a recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize. She lives with her husband in Ventura, California, where they founded the Ventura County Poetry Project to support local poetry.

Reviews

Every Ravening Thing presents a matchless intensity and intellectual grit, a fearless investigation into the world amplified by a vision that is both cosmic and detailed in our common suffering. This is a brave book of poetry.--Christopher Buckley
At its heart is a profound empathy for human suffering of all kinds, but the poems offer neither solace nor cure. Each feels like a brave experiment that extracts a question from the world then answers it. In almost every poem I feel an unanticipated shock of recognition, which happens only when profundity, clarity, and a fierce allegiance to truth combine in one intelligence. Tough, searing, and dangerous, these are among the rare necessary poems of our age.--Chase Twichell
This is poetry meant to open hearts and change attitudes in fundamental and necessary ways, poetry of witness and utility. It is also often deeply moving.-- "South Florida Poetry Review"
What is ferocious - ravenous - here is the poet's driven need to tell things as they truly are, which means it's not always a pretty picture that she so carefully assembles for the reader. And I love the raucous regard she has for diction: reckless and powerfully inventive and fresh the way air can be fresh. All of this is held together by a commitment to the music that drives these poems in a way that soothes the ear. Every Ravening Thing could serve as a warning to all of us about our failures as men and women, and as a celebration of the good we're capable of doing and in that way is a necessary part of our reading.--Bruce Weigl

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