Calenture - Hardcover

Kent Shaw

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1597320390 ISBN 13: 9781597320399

Publisher: University of Tampa Press, 2008

Synopsis

In this memorable first book, Kent Shaw explores layers of devotion, illusion, and sacrifice in abstract and personal terms. At age eighteen, he enlisted for six years of service in the U.S. Navy. Midway through, his unadulterated patriotism shifted to unanticipated doubt. Calenture whose title refers to a sickness sailors suffer as they come to believe the ocean is a meadow, try to walk into it, and find themselves drowning draws upon rich seagoing metaphors to probe faith, change, and delusion. With poems of ocean and spirit, land and love, family and stranger, this book is anchored and buoyed by a sailor's undeniable longing to experience a great voyage fully and to render it true and whole.

About this title

About the Author

Kent Shaw hails from St. Louis and Oklahoma City. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear qualified electrician and served on board the USS Eisenhower, which offered support during the first Gulf War. His poems have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Quarterly West, New Orleans Review, Greensboro Review, American Literary Review, Smartish Pace, and others. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the Creative Writing Program at University of Houston, where he serves as poetry editor at Gulf Coast.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Tampa Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1597320390
• ISBN 13: 9781597320399
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Richard Diebenkorn
• Number of pages: 100