Description
Book SynopsisThis elegant and moving collection of poems documents Hilda Raz's experience with breast cancer.
Trade Review“Transgressive and transcendent, Hilda Raz’s . . . poems are intimately involved with the physical, corporeal world, and constantly making the leap of faith necessary to its reembodiment in words. These poems push the boundaries of what language can do to enunciate perception. Their beauty, their clarity, their mystery equally compel.”—Marilyn Hacker
“In
Divine Honors we’re in for a head-on collision with grief, the inescapable fact of cancer. Raz conveys joy and hope and love of others and of the natural world turned into poetry, after that horrible discovery and ordeal. The best of the poems are breathtaking—the sensuous imagery, the sounds she repeats for the pleasure of reading, and the surprising juxtaposition of images. I love this book of poems—grief and longing turned into poetry.”—Walter McDonald
“
Divine Honors is a rare book, one that does honor to its subject and transcends it at the same time. An unflinching account of the cost and the effects of breast cancer,
Divine Honors illuminates much more about a women’s life that has, mysteriously, remained shadowy in so many other accounts of women’s lives. Few books change your way of viewing the world. This one does.”—Susan Fromberg Schaffer
Table of ContentsPrologue
Repair
Narrative Without People
Let's consider the consequences
Isaac Stern's Performance
I
I Hear the Name of the Moon and Am Afraid
Weathering/boundaries/what is good
To Explain
Mu
Coming Down with Something
Fish--Belly--Mound
"Two Are Better Than One"
Getting Well
For Barbara, Who Brings a Green Stone in the Shape of a Triangle
Day-Old Bargain
Breast/fever
II
Sarah's Response
Sarah Among Animals
Sarah's Head
Sarah Fledging
Sarah's Waltz
Balance
Order
Axe-earrings, abalone shell
Birth
III
Opening/Working/Walking
Hey You
Grieving, she hits the red fox
Mapping/Bleating
Trope
Sow Sister
Bernini's Ribbon
Petting the Scar
Teaching, Hurt
Riddle
IV
Chigger Socks
Daylight Savings: Sandy Creek, Nebraska
Cobb's Hill Pond
Fuss
Zen: the one I love most holds my tongue
Camarada From Your Mouth to God's Ear
"We don't deserve what we get"
G: But it's still not all right with you?
Mutation Blues
Insomnia Again
Service
V
Hot
Dying
Terror: A Riddle
Nuts
Lincoln, Nebraska
Letter of Transmittal
Now
Who Does She Think She Is
Earlier
Vowels
Epilogue
Gloxinia/Flicker/Oxalis
Recovery
My Award/The Jew of Lukow
Ecstasies
Acknowledgments
