| Title | : | The Secret Signature of Things |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1894078810 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781894078818 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 96 |
| Publication | : | First published March 1, 2010 |
| Awards | : | Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (2011) |
Much of this poised and luminous book is rooted in an idea of epiphany, an aesthetics of everyday incarnation; not the sudden and profound manifestation of essence or meaning, but the smaller steps taken toward it. The moments in which, as Joyce writes, "the soul of the commonest object ... seems to us radiant." If epiphanies are for theologians, perhaps the little steps towards them are for poets like Eve Joseph, and for all of us who attempt to see beyond the names we give things to the names they give themselves. The rubber plant in the hospital cafeteria is waiting for rain. Palms up beneath a sky of fluorescent lights, its leaves are broad enough to be roof, temporary shelter, shade to small creatures caught in the open. The hiker, for instance, who has made a fire with wet twigs and hunkers down to wait it out under his wide blue tarpaulin. - from "Shelter"
The Secret Signature of Things Reviews
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Beautiful writing, strong imagery. This is the kind of language that moves you...
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Hung-over,
standing around with the boys,
a bridegroom in a rumpled
black suit
Wings to the sun,
wings to the wind -
I want to sing
like the great Caruso
at the Savoy Hotel.- Cormorant, pg. 23
* * *
If one were to interpret the language of birds
one might begin by confessing a fear
of height, remembering days atop
the hemlock and the uneasy alliance of
thin branch beneath feet; and one would
have to study landings, carefully, for many,
many years before attempting to fall
with arms wide open from some great height.
If one were to interpret the language of birds.
If one were to interpret the language of birds
one would have to throw open the doors
and let them all in: warbler, wren, the swift river swallow,
and it would be necessary to make a bed
in the girders beneath the silver train bridge
and in the rafters of the abandoned barn
where the farmer hanged himself
and the swallows sang him all night from flesh.
If one were to interpret the language of birds.
In order to interpret the language of birds
one must ask what the crow knows of death,
what the red-winged blackbird knows of the reed
in the marsh where the world begins, again,
each morning, and one must rise out of bed
although the desire to do so is gone and the grey light
falling through the window touches, briefly,
a sadness that lives inside all that one is,
in order to interpret the language of birds.
If one were to interpret the language of birds
it would be necessary to steal from other songs
the one true song - the few notes sung
to please the jailor - and in singing feel
bones begin to thin and throat lengthen
and like the Baal Shem Tov one would hear
their entreaties and know their songs
as the first grief ever sung.
If one were to interpret the language of birds.- The Language of Birds, after Galway Kinnell, pg. 45-46
* * *
The seeds
you fed the bids
to ward off winter
sprouted.
Bird grass
you called it.
In those,
your last days,
a late benevolence
revealed itself;
what was not scattered
grew to nourish us.
What was no longer useful,
the wind carried away.- Benevolence, pg. 54
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Eve Joseph presents to you collections of poems unquenched with mystery, nature and the everyday. She opened my eyes to the daily passings of magic coated underneath automation bias of mundanity. Open your eyes and find the everyday epiphany.
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Exquisite, quiet, mundane poetry.
Loved this collection.
