Description
Book SynopsisBruce Snider's third poetry collection grapples with what it means to be childless in a world obsessed with procreation. Poems move between the scientific and the biblical, effortlessly sliding from the clinical landscape of a sperm bank to Mount Moriah as Abraham prepares Isaac for sacrifice.
Trade ReviewOriginal and rhapsodic, rich in tender details, Snider's beautiful book is driven by acceptance: the rarest of spiritual fruits." - Spencer Reece, author of
The Road to Emmaus and
The Clerk's Tale"Snider's ravishing new collection examines the ways family is made - the histories we come from, our choices in who and what to nurture. Here are elegies for the self, litanies for the dead, a childlessness both mourned and celebrated, a life ripe with every hurt and desire." - Traci Brimhall, author of
Saudade and
Our Lady of the Ruins"Deeply felt and beautifully built,
Fruit is a remarkable book that braids yearning and endurance into sweeping and exquisite music." - Eduardo C. Corral, author of
Guillotine and
Slow LightningTable of Contents
- The Blue Whale Has the Largest Heart of Any Living Creature 3
- I. Homo 7
- Litany for My Father's Sperm 8
- Childless 10
- Fruit 11
- Creation Myth 13
- My Uncle's Barn Cat as the Shadow of Death 14
- Childless 15
- On Swallowing the Fourth Plague of Egypt 16
- Because Eden, from the Hebrew, Meant Pleasure 17
- Childless 19
- Ellipsis, Dash, Bullet Point 20
- Cleaning My Father's Rifle 22
- They Will Not Eat the Bird of Paradise 25
- Why My Father Smells Like the Night 27
- Childless 28
- After Reading the Wikipedia Entry on Homosexual Behavior in Moths 29
- Inside the Creation Museum 30
- The Average Human 32
- Childless 34
- Chemistry 35
- On Billy Lucas, Who Hanged Himself in His Grandmother's Barn 37
- II. Devotions 41
- III. Twin Peaks Bar, San Francisco 47
- Childless 49
- Toy Box 50
- Shelter 51
- Elegy for the Girl I Was 55
- Childless 56
- Litany for My Father's Guns 57
- Still Life with Cows 59
- It's the Dog 61
- Childless 63
- At the Sperm Bank 64
- Prayer for the Bear My Father Shot 65
- Elegy for the Bully 66
- Heaven and Earth 67
- Mendel on His Death Bed 70
- Childless 72
- Creation Myth 73
- Territory 74
- One Day, He Said, I'd Carry on the Family Name 76
- Frutti di Mare 77
- Acknowledgments 81
