Second Bloom: Poems (Poiema Poetry) - Softcover

Silver, Anya Krugovoy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1532630077 ISBN 13: 9781532630071

Publisher: Cascade Books, 2017

Synopsis

In Second Bloom, Silver looks unflinchingly and honestly at the suffering of cancer, while at the same time celebrating the possibility of joy, the persistence of beauty and love, the simultaneous winnowing and comfort of faith. These poems are contemplative and often personal, but reach out to the world as a whole: from IV poles to hula hoops, from riding a roller coaster with one's son to comforting a dying friend at Christmas. The poems glean their subject matter from ordinary life, from art, from the natural world. Silver's poetry attempts to preserve the world's luminous moments and to hold grace and despair simultaneously in the human heart.

About this title

About the Author:

Second Bloom is Anya Silver's fourth book of poetry. Her previous books are The Ninety-Third Name of God, I Watched You Disappear (2010), for which she won the Georgia Poet of the Year Award, and From Nothing (2016). She is Professor of English at Mercer University, and lives in downtown Macon, Georgia, with her husband and son. She is a poet, teacher, wife, mother, and metastatic breast cancer thriver.

Review:

"At the heart of these new poems is a longstanding determination to make the most of time, and of mind, and of the immediate surround--whether that immediacy is composed of grief, or of joy, or of perplexity.  The deep, bass note here is attend! The developing hunger is holiness." --Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems"To bloom is so foolish/that it must be wisdom."  Anya Silver writes, in poem after stunning poem, about living with cancer and still finding words to praise this beautiful and ephemeral world.  These are the bravest poems you'll ever read, by a woman at the top of her artistic game.  Even though she knows that winter is coming, Silver's words put out fresh green shoots.  These poems will crack open your heart." --Barbara Crooker, author of Les Fauves and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems"In lines saturated with colors and delicious with sneaky rhymes, in elegies and ekphrastic poems, in liturgical poems and hymns to ordinary things in ordinary time--a slinky green dress. . . a grape popsicle on the the tongue after days of hospital fasting--Silver gives us life's pain met time and again with pleasure and feast, rather than with despair.  Although 'the roses in second bloom/know what's coming,' they bloom nonetheless. To read this book is to witness Silver seeking, and finding, holiness around every corner." --Melissa Range, author of Scriptorium and Horse and Rider"Underneath the bees and birds and blossoms of this fine collection, Anya Krugovoy Silver reveals the stings and flights of joy--the transience of this our life and the tender hope of a life to come.  Her eye and ear find beauty in the darkest places.  To read her is to know firsthand the meaning of the word redemption." --Paul J. Willis, author of Say This Prayer Into the Past

About this edition

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1532630077
• ISBN 13: 9781532630071
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 90