Later the House Stood Empty - Softcover

Draper, Melina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597099732 ISBN 13: 9781597099738

Publisher: Red Hen Press, 2014

Synopsis

The poems of Later the House Stood Empty steam up from the banks of the Río de la Plata, exploring its history—personal, political, and geological—from the tip of a dinosaur tail found on the beach and the expeditions of Darwin to the lingering devastations of the 1970s military coups. Their speaker straddles two worlds: between Argentina and Uruguay, between Buenos Aires and the small town of Colonia, at once of this place and passing through, both foreigner and daughter of the river. In short lyrics pared down to what is left when love and hope have gone, Draper documents overlapping layers of time, stitched together by desire, beauty, longing, tragedy, and loss.

About this title

About the Author:

Melina Draper s poems have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Cimarron Review, Borderlands: Texas Review, PALABRA: A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art, Salamander, and other journals. Her book Place of Origin/Lugar de Origen (Oyster River Press, 2008), co-authored with her mother, Argentine writer Elena Lafert, won the Latino Book Award for Best Bilingual Book of Poetry in 2009. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and an MA in fiction from the University of New Hampshire. She lives in Geneva, New York."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

After I knew a woman I knew a man, lovely in his bones,
when a tom cat yowled, he took it in;
ah, when he moved, I sighed and moaned―
how flesh alone? and skeleton?―
(it was not his mind that drew me).
Blason! Blason! I need Shakespeare to decree
his beauty from moustache to knee.
 
He knew the value of aesthetics
in wooing women: bait and wait.
He taught me the night is for athletics;
oh the ways a body can gyrate!
(Love came too late, when we were done.)
In the end it’s he who intones,
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones.

About this edition

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1597099732
• ISBN 13: 9781597099738
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 88