Description
Book SynopsisWhen the Gnostic Gospels collide with new age spiritualism, the Oxford Happiness Test, and treatises on Buddhist practice, we know we're in the territory of a Bruce Beasley collection. Alternately devout and heretical, Beasleyknown for his intense and continuing soul-quest through previous award-winning booksinterrogates the absurdities, psychic violence, and spiritual condition of twenty-first century America with despair, philosophic intelligence, and piercing humor.
Bruce Beasley is the author of eight collections of poetry, including Theophobia (BOA, 2012). The winner of numerous literary awards and fellowships, he lives in Bellingham, WA, where he is a professor of English at Western Washington University.
Table of ContentsThe Parts Torn-to-Pieces-Hood Part I Thou Must Leave Report to the Provost on the Progress of My Leave 1 Me Meaneth 4 Reading Jesus Again, with a New Prescription 9 Part II Disorientation Psalm Tohu Bohu 13 Looking Down the Cliff, with Schopenhauer, on Black Friday 16 The Last Good 19 “I Don’t Like My Soul Parts” 21 Reading The Purpose Driven Life, with Schopenhauer 22 Part III Hymeneal Nuptial Song 26 On Marriage 29 Antithalamion 30 What Do You Think the Poet Is Trying to Say? 33 The Name of the Island Was Marriage 35 Offspring Insprung 39 Part IV The Sixth Dust Revised Catechism 43 Cleft for Me Let Me Hide Myself from Thee 45 Such and Such and Such and Such 47 Part V The Mass of the Ordinary Kyrie 51 Embolism 54 Sanctus 57 Credo 58 Fraction Rite 60 Agnus Dei 63 Benedictus 65 Gloria 68 NONORDINARY TO THE POEMS 70
