Description
Book SynopsisIn this debut collection from Jennie Malboeuf, we observe undercurrents of violence and power, the dynamics of memory, gender, marriage, and miscarriage. At times, God is brutal. At times, delicate. Through true stories of animal savagery, God Had a Body unravels human behavior and undoes the opaque and cryptic mysteries of faith.
Trade Review"Salient and provoking, sensuous and cerebral, Jennie Malboeuf's poems locate holiness in the living, dead, partial and whole creations of this planet: among them a "cow's eye . . . so pretty I squinched hard/and wished it back to the socket"; a "redback spider [that] throws himself/into the hollow fangs of his beloved" ; a dead whale whose "mouth hung open/like a friendly doorway," until "that certain scent of ending" makes the human fantasy of welcome clear. Yes, we are like the animals—whether tiny or enormous—but make no mistake: they are themselves, worthy of our attention and our reverence, rarely reflecting us. As Malboeuf puts it, "the birds we kept/in cages fought any mirror." The poet laces her observant news of these encounters with a biblical re-envisioning, as well as with her own peculiar wit: for example, in "The Cow's Eye," Malboeuf notes that "Daddy picked it up from the stockyards . . . He said it'd help with my science project." In another encounter, the speaker's father has a run-in with a mosquito: "at the height of an anecdote, a mosquito, a female, / flew inside his head." The humor there is spiky and profound. At the doctor's office, the daughter gets to see "the mold of hot wax they poured to pull her—preserved in flight—right out." In "The Hydra," that organism is described as "a penis-shaped creature with a spider/topping its head." This poet thrives amid and among other bodies, observing, feeling, and listening, trying very hard not to cut life short or diminish its sacredness with fallible descriptions, while acknowledging with her striking wit our human-centric eye. I relish these poems and will return to them for their stories, their humor, and the ways they intertwine language and life."—Lisa Williams, author of Woman Reading to the Sea
"There is a fierce spirituality and mordant wit in God had a body, Jennie Malboeuf's first book of poems. Here is a poet with a transformative vision of divine and earthly enterprise as well as a sharp eye for the repercussions of physical detail. Malboeuf's use of enactments and embodiments—actions and images—startle and awaken the reader to a powerful new voice in American poetry. What a glorious debut collection."—Stuart Dischell, author of Children with Enemies
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
The Godhead
Part I
First Death Ever Filmed
Christ is a Great Blue Heron
The Cow's Eye
Animals in the Bible
Frog Gig, 1983
Some Things Have Been Heard Enough
Grackles
Wilding
Ruth
Sacred Heart
Animals
The Meaning of God
A Figure for the Holy Ghost
Part II
The Country
Orrery
The Leonids
Early Signs of the Apocalypse
Zoonosis
Song of the Cock
Men in My Bed as Dead Animal in Dog Mouth
al Meal
Landscape Where I Forget My Father
Blindfold
Animals in Captivity
The Nightjar
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The Giving Away
Repletion
Snakehandling
Fear
What the Eclipse Does to Animals
The Miracle of the Pigs
Landscape Where I Miss My Mother
Phobia, 1985
lullaby
Grandmothers
The Men
In the Myths
Kingdom
Hubris
The Women
First Mirror
The Screwworm
Mnemonics
Ode to the Cannibal
Man, Beast, Lion, Bird
God-man
Inscape
Thought Inventory with Rorschach and Caesura
Letting Go
Topography of a Bird
Part III
Newfound Star System
Double Star—
Orbs
The Godwit
To Begin With
Heavy Animals, or Frustrated Attempts to See God
Immolation
The Hydra
Eschatology
The Gospels
The Lesser Water Boatman
Orgasm as Lapwing
Erection
Valentine
The Quickening
Wedding Night
Elfland
Nesting
flying change
Strawberry Moon
Honest Signals
Reasons We Should Be Together
The Night We Decided Was a Day
