Wisdom of the Body - Softcover

Roche, Judith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0930773810 ISBN 13: 9780930773816

Publisher: Black Heron Press, 2007

Synopsis

Wisdom of the Body is a meditation in poetry on the bodiness,-the physicality-of all things: our bodies and how they change, the salmon and their life cycle, trees, flowers, the earth, everything caught in the mystery of time. The book contains a series of poems on the life cycle of Pacific Northwest salmon that was a City of Seattle public arts project, and poems from the libretto of a musical piece by noted composer Janice Gitech, Navigating the Light.

About this title

About the Author

All Fire All Water is Judith Roche’s fourth poetry collection. Her third, Wisdom of the Body, won an American Book Award. She has published widely in various journals and magazines, and has poems installed on several public art projects in the Seattle area. She edited First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim, which also won an American Book Award. She has conducted workshops around the United States and has taught at several universities. She currently teaches at Richard Hugo House Literary Center. She is a Fellow in the Black Earth Institute, a progressive think tank exploring the links between nature, spirit, and social justice.

Reviews

In her luminous third collection, Roche's subject is the body as a cultural and spiritual as well as physical form. In the magnificent "Credo," she lists what sustains her: "I believe in the cave paintings at Lascaux, / The beauty of the clavicle, / The journey of the salmon . . . I believe in the wisdom of the body." That wisdom isn't without pain, and the book is haunted by the deaths that occur when "Someone will come at the end / and tell you a story so beautiful / you will rise out of yourself / and go into it," as she almost did, she tells us in an autobiographical poem about nearly drowning. Yet the body's wisdom is expanded rather than limited by death, which enjoins us to more vivid life: "The mouth knows the taste of its own tongue / hungers for savor, makes meaning / of sound, trying to name truth." This is a powerful and courageous book, full of lyric intensity and crystal-sharp imagery. Patricia Monaghan
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Edition details

• Publisher: Black Heron Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0930773810
• ISBN 13: 9780930773816
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 94