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For three years you lived in your house just as it was before she died: your wedding portrait on the mantel, her clothes hanging in the closet, her hair still in the brush. You have told me you gave it all away then, sold the house, keeping only the confirmation cross she wore, her name in cursive chased on the gold underside, your ring in the same
box, those photographs you still avoid, and the quilt you spread on your borrowed bed — small things. Months after we met, you told me she had made it, after we had slept already beneath its loft and thinning, raveled pattern, as though beneath her shadow, moving with us, that dark, that soft.
abbya, February 7, 2007 (view all comments by abbya)
I am drawn to subtle lines - the labyrinth between obscurantism and simplicity of poems like the ones in this collection. This is a fascinating experiment - a mixture of history, afterlife, exploration of the inner self and valences that add up the maze and webs of life. Claudia brilliantly quells apprehensions of poetryphobics with her luxuriantly beautiful lines, sonnets and elegies.
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supani123, October 19, 2006 (view all comments by supani123)
neatly crafted poem with jewels and pearls as words.
the poem has a sheen in all its sentences
and waves so much of fragrance attracting the serenity in souls
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Late Wife: Poems (Southern Messenger Poets)
Used Trade Paper
Claudia Emerson
0 stars -
0 reviews
$9.00
In Stock
Product details
54 pages
Louisiana State University Press -
English9780807130841
Reviews:
"Review"
by Mark Jarman,
"Claudia Emerson's Late Wife tells the story of love lost and redeemed. Her poetry explores the way we attach meaning to things without us and connect them with our inner lives. In her hands heartbreak and healing turn as tangible as the material world she observes with such love and such precision."
"Review"
by Deborah Pope,
"Like the estranged lover in one of her poems who pitches horseshoes in the dark with preternatural precision, so Emerson sends her words into a different kind of darkness with steely exactness, their arc of perception over and over striking true. With exceptional linguistic and emotional poise, her fine new collection moves from retrospect to prospect, from one love's withering to another's rebirth, from loss not merely tallied but to that rarer arrival: loss weighed, survived, understood."
"Review"
by Henry Taylor,
"Though they clearly fit into various points along the outline of a story, Emerson's new poems transcend narrative. They are deeply absorbing because their author has brilliantly observed brief but powerful moments, and rendered these miracles of observation with secure craftsmanship."
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