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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Time Remaining: Body Odes, Praise Songs, Oddities, Amazements
An exuberant collection celebrating the body and the soul of language, wringing delights and amazements out of the latter years of life.In his seventh decade and seventh full length collection, poet James P. Lenfestey dazzles with a suite of odes to parts of the body--heart, belly, ankle, teeth, ears, and more--and astonishment at the powers of language: "the sound of 'n, '" our ancient alphabet, "the terror of publishing." Known for his exuberant Chinese-style lyrics, now inspired by Neruda's cascading Elemental Odes, Lenfestey praises Hewlett and Packard, Bruce Springsteen, "the language of crow," fruit flies, and cabbages while recalling the "forgiveness of the Catbird" and random acts of kindness, all with his superb ear for sound, rhythm, and leaping figurative language.Rhythmic, jovial, and eminently approachable, this collection embraces the Cetacean mind and the fearless left hand. Here, Lenfestey writes love songs to the world "as it really is: bizarro, curious, inelegant, unclean, / unfaithful, filled with delight."
Book Details
- Publisher: Milkweed Editions
- Publish Date: Nov 19th, 2024
- Pages: 128
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.40in - 0.60in - 0.40lb
- EAN: 9781571315748
- Categories: • American - General• Subjects & Themes - Love & Erotica
About the Author
Lenfestey, James P.: - James P. Lenfestey is the author of Seeking the Cave: A Pilgrimage to Cold Mountain, a Minnesota Book Award finalist, and multiple collections of essays and poems, including A Marriage Book. He is also the editor of multiple anthologies, including Robert Bly in This World. Lenfestey is a former college English instructor, alternative school administrator, marketing communications consultant, and editorial writer for the Star Tribune, where he won several Page One awards for excellence. As a journalist, he covers education, energy policy, and climate science. He is chair of the Literary Witnesses poetry series, teaches at the Mackinac Island Poetry Festival, and lives in Minneapolis with his wife.
Praise for this book
Praise for A Marriage Book"James Lenfestey, after a lifetime of attentive writing, has lately done poems for family and marriage that put most of us to shame." --Gary Snyder, New York Times Book Review"Warning Label: prepare to be shaken, moved, amused, terrified, relieved, delighted. Take in small doses or one large gulp; either way, you will be healed. These poems are alive with many things--stories, images, metaphors--but more than anything else they are alive with rhythm. These are poems of mutual passion, but also of heartbreak and solitude. In the final stanza of 'My Wife Sleeping as I Drive, ' James P. Lenfestey writes: 'We plunge along our course of earth, / each alert in our own way, / ahead the blue black sky full /of oncoming lights and stars. How amazing that we have been invited along for the ride!'"--Jim Moore, author of Prognosis"I've been an avid reader of James P. Lenfestey's work for many years. His Seeking the Cave was a wonder. And so is his Marriage Book, a collection rooted in passion, desire, sensuality, and the 'shared heat' of love. This is above all a book of transcendence, of celebration. Containing a wealth of extraordinary poems, it appears to have been conceived in a beautiful sustained burst of illumination, Lenfestey overlapping his themes to create a collection so seamless it could well be read as one long poem. This is a truly superb book, an absolute joy to read."--Robert Hedin, author of Traveling Light"These tender, sly, plainspoken poems are a profound (and sexy) hymn to a long marriage. James Lenfestey writes of domestic matters, yes, but the poems are most definitely undomesticated. They tell a thousand small secrets in an extended meditation on love and all its consequences. They also chart the history of a complex emotion over many years, which I found fascinating. Tonally nuanced, fresh and far-ranging, the voice in these poems is a delight."--Chase Twichell, author of Things as It IsPraise for Seeking the Cave"A lively account of James P. Lenfestey's trip to China, which includes a visit to the cave where Han-shan actually lived, a number of Chinese poems written 1,200 years ago, and poems of his own written on the trail to Cold Mountain. It unites our brief literary life with the ancient richness of Chinese culture."--Robert Bly, author of Like the New Moon, I will Live My Life
"A profound, and profoundly personal book. It's very captivating, warm and friendly, personal, unguarded, idiosyncratic, pointed but also finally apolitical, and eminently charming."--Gary Snyder, author of The Present Moment
"James P. Lenfestey's ranging, big-hearted book of pilgrimage and quest recounts the meeting of two poets, one a twentieth-century American, the other a surprisingly gregarious T'ang Dynasty hermit known for both his poems of deep solitude and the warmth of his friendships. The story of Lenfestey's late-life search for his own self's unfolding portrait is, in happy sympathy, replete with deft portraits of others, from the translator-scholars Burton Watson and Bill Porter to the sincere and enterprising Buddhist nuns opening a new shrine and its accompanying gift shop. Seeking the Cave intertwines landscape and language, poetry and prose, foodstuffs and culture, and above all, the explorations of inner life made outward, step by step, on the steep paths of China's cities and mountains."--Jane Hirshfield, author of Ledger
"A profound, and profoundly personal book. It's very captivating, warm and friendly, personal, unguarded, idiosyncratic, pointed but also finally apolitical, and eminently charming."--Gary Snyder, author of The Present Moment
"James P. Lenfestey's ranging, big-hearted book of pilgrimage and quest recounts the meeting of two poets, one a twentieth-century American, the other a surprisingly gregarious T'ang Dynasty hermit known for both his poems of deep solitude and the warmth of his friendships. The story of Lenfestey's late-life search for his own self's unfolding portrait is, in happy sympathy, replete with deft portraits of others, from the translator-scholars Burton Watson and Bill Porter to the sincere and enterprising Buddhist nuns opening a new shrine and its accompanying gift shop. Seeking the Cave intertwines landscape and language, poetry and prose, foodstuffs and culture, and above all, the explorations of inner life made outward, step by step, on the steep paths of China's cities and mountains."--Jane Hirshfield, author of Ledger