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Book Cover for: Square Inch Hours: Poems, Sherod Santos

Square Inch Hours: Poems

Sherod Santos

Nominee:National Book Award -Poetry (2017)

A poetic meditation, Square Inch Hours draws on elements from fiction, memoir, daybook, and reverie, piecing together moments in the aftermath of a breakdown. With adamant attentiveness, the speaker turns his focus to reality in its minute particulars: the palsied hand of a grocery clerk; copulating flies on a windowsill; a deep gouge, like a bullet hole, in his apartment door. The title Square Inch Hours expresses his urge to capture each moment, as in the square of a photograph. Through intense sensual perception, he begins to reconnect with the world.

Book Details

  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
  • Publish Date: Jan 1st, 2019
  • Pages: 80
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.10in - 5.30in - 0.40in - 0.22lb
  • EAN: 9780393356670
  • Categories: American - General

About the Author

Santos, Sherod: - Sherod Santos is the author of seven books of poetry. A National Book Award finalist, he received an Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Chicago, where he works in an outreach program for the homeless.

Praise for this book

There are seraphim and scars, fog and Fellini in this brilliant collection, where the incisive, rhythmic imagery of poetry meets the depth and narrative of fiction. Every page evokes and invites the reader to see more clearly, to imagine more wildly, to read and to breathe more deeply.--Amy Bloom
This is a book of observation, a catalog of urban surfaces and psychological detachment--as if suddenly Camus's Stranger started to walk in the Chicago streets. Sherod Santos's brilliant literary experiment.--Adam Zagajewski
These prose poems and aphorisms, these lyrical narratives, unfold exponentially. This truly is a work much greater than the sum of any parts. Stunning.--John Kinsella
Emotionally charged.... These diorama-like texts, which locate a range of human feelings in the sundry details of the everyday, are something of a contemporary Book of Disquiet.-- "Publishers Weekly"
Square Inch Hours is notable for the precision, honesty, and clarity with which it details the life of the mind.-- "Harvard Review"