The Earth Avails

Mark Wunderlich

ISBN 10: 1555976662 / ISBN 13: 9781555976668

Published by Graywolf Press,U.S., US, 2014

About this Item

The title The Earth Avails is actually a translation of an Old English poem, and this collection works in a similar vein - many of them echoing the Viking-era occasional poem; reflecting nature and fate in modern translations. Exploring a time, long forgotten, when every setting, thought and action was imbued with ritual. Rendered in part from folkoric and historical sources, Mark Wunderlich's poems revinvent these traditons with lyrical and emotive force for a new century of readers.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781555976668

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Earth Avails
• Publisher: Graywolf Press,U.S., US
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555976662
• ISBN 13: 9781555976668
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 156 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The anticipated new book by Mark Wunderlich, whose poetry "reminds us how fully the spirit can illuminate the depths" (The New Yorker)

A Publishers Weekly Book of the Week

With your sorghum broom you sweetened my path, pulled
the woolen shawl around me while I slept.

That the lightning struck the willow
and did not fall―for this I am grateful.
―from "Heaven-Letter"

The Earth Avails evokes an all-but-lost history, when every setting, thought, and action was imbued with ritual: here's the prayer said in a time of sickness; here's the blessing spoken upon entering the house; here's the letter from heaven that protects its holder from harm and misfortune. Rendered in part from folkloric and historical sources, Mark Wunderlich's poems reinvent these traditions with lyrical and emotive force for a new century of readers.

About the Author

Mark Wunderlich is the author of The Anchorage, which won the 1999 Lambda Literary Award. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.