a poem is a house

linda ravenswood

Description

Linda Ravenswood’s magnificent [collection] a poem is a house is a work of address. It speaks to complex figures dwelling in the inscape and the outscape of the text. It acknowledges its imagination. The speaker and, perhaps, the writer and/or the reader are actively involved … floating, dissolving, life-making, jagged, transparent, transformative … These are some of the existential conditions that the work carries, [in] glaciers of text, broken into bodies of different shapes, densities, colors, rhythms, destinations, desires.

—Juan Felipé Herrera, U.S. Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and author of

Notes on the Assemblage

an aetiology of wings on a whyt laytee

or metaphor for the borderland

in the voice of the mother of Malinzin

 

I came home to find I’d forgotten to let the ghost out

the whole length of summer

             it was dead, of course

             crouching like an iron skillet to the floor

a snug door stop

some mother purse

             Get rid of it I blazed in the mirror

             even as one was in the throes

of doing just that.

Holding it at handletail

             I watched it

             being marshaled to the bins

one always forgets something when one leaves home

one day one’ll come it’ll all be burnt

table of contents

  v Land Acknowledgment

 ix Foreword by Brian Sonia Wallace 

  1 To live at the scene of an accident introduction

  2 The children turn themselves into ICE

  3 a poem is a city

  4 To live at the scene of an accident

  5 a poem is a house floating on water

  6 names of Malinche / names of her children / no such thing

as half-breed / only new celestinas

  7 poem.   grandmother book.   el libro de la tatarabuelita

  9 To live at the scene of an accident 2

10 a poem is a woman

11 Mixpantli—Malinche

13 To live at the scene of an accident 3

14 a poem is war

15 My fathers eyes in the sloe time gravity of kelp beds off Baja 

California Sur

17 a poem is a family

18 To live at the scene of an accident 4

19 an aetiology of wings on a whyt laytee

or metaphor for the borderland

in the voice of the mother of Malinzin

20 a poem is gold

21 the dream of the grass blowing

22 Untitled note from Oregon

23 a poem is a disappearance

24 the carriage ride / with my whites / 7 generations out

25 a poem is a house

26 Receipt

29 Ode to America

30 aunt susie

31 a poem is a diaspora

32 in the sky which is called history

34 To live at the scene of an accident 5

35 Suitcases

37 after Daniel Borzutzky, The Book of Non-Writing

39 apples turn.

40 a poem is a husband

41 Elementary school

43 To live at the scene of an accident 6

44 on divers memorias

46 a poem is iron

47 1519 water dream

49 a poem is a choir

50 anyone who saw me might’ve thought I was dancing

53 To live at the scene of an accident      coda

 

55 Acknowledgments

57 About the Author

Sujets

• Women Authors
• PTSD
• Latin American
• Multiracial
• Posttraumatic stress disorder
• Poetry
• Places
• Caribbean
• Trouble de stress post-traumatique
• California
• LA
• Los Angeles

Informations

• Publié par: Madville Publishing
• Date de parution: 16 janvier 2024
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781956440669
• Langue: English

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