Description
Book SynopsisCatastrophic Bliss contemplates the longing to understand connections and disconnections within a world ever more fragmented yet interdependent. With allusions to Dante, Stevie Wonder, Fernando Pessoa, Persephone and Marianne Moore, these poems move from the tumultuous to the sublime: a pit bull killing an invading thief, two people on a New York City subway playing chess, Billy Eckstine recording in Rio de Janeiro, to an imagined Barack Obama writing poems to his father. Myronn Hardy’s third collection comprises war, place, love, and history all yearning to be reconciled.
Trade Review“The only medicine is the voice,” Myronn Hardy tells us in his vivid and eloquent new collection of poems, Catastrophic Bliss, and what he tries to mend by speaking are the fractured cultures and landscapes that haunt contemporary consciousness. Hardy’s “voice” sings with fresh and arresting observations—“stingrays with pale/ undersides like hands”—and through them he explores the fragile co-existence of man and nature—the bliss of it and the catastrophe. -- Michael Collier
Myronn Hardy’s Catastrophic Bliss is a book of double exposures: whether his landscape is Africa, Spain, or North America, his landscapes are haunted by history, by other times and other places. History in these beautiful poems is both a blessing and a curse, a burden one can neither cast off nor carry. And while Hardy understands that there is no "sweetness without toil," he honors the toil by presenting the sweetness as a poor exchange, however necessary, for all the suffering behind it. This is a complicated, mature collection, a collection for adults. -- Alan Shapiro
Table of ContentsCatastrophic Bliss Reticence The Walk Making Stars with Jacob Lawrence This Train Seeks Dust Linens Near a Ghost Town Habits Jaguaripe Removing Atmosphere: A Seascape The Gold Room Playing Chess on the A Aubade: Blue Hydrangeas Peaches ?ba’s Stew The Sermon Communion Birthday Fish The Lion Friday Night Sighting Graze for the Captain Three The Saved Blackberries Robiezene’s Circle The Telling The Raft with Machado de Assis Chemotherapy Moon What the Tide Leaves Wine on King Street Madrugada Mucambo Rocket Grenades Two Baianas Beckon Sorrow Felipe Loves Marilyn River Tracks Boa Morte Redux The Resolved Exú Retonados Platoon Rhythm in the Republic: Mr. President Samba Billy Eckstine’s Felicidade: Rio de Janeiro, 1963 Fado: Facing the Salon Fado: Sunset Fado: After the Ballet Disiz La Peste: An Interview Insha’Allah Undertones Weekend The Pulse Crabs Fixate on Red Notes Acknowledgments Author Biography The Griot-Stadler Prize for Poetry
