Description
Book SynopsisThrough poems of witness, species and habitat extinction, war, pandemic, technology, history, and race, Mark Irwin's elegant collection of poetry explores the collision between metropolis and wilderness, and engages with forms of spirit that cannot be bound. With the incursion of electronic communication, our connections with one another have been radically distorted. Irwin's poems confront what it means to be human, and how conflict, along with the interface between technology and humanity, can cause us to become orphaned in many different ways. But it is our decision to be joyful.
Excerpt from "Letter"
Times when we touch hope like the hem of a cloud
just as when we touch a body or door, or think
of the dead come back, romancing
us through the warp of memory, lighting a way
by luring . . .
Trade Review"
Joyful Orphan is skilled, masterful work."—Sherwin Bitsui, Navajo writer and poet, author of
Flood Song"This collection is a deft and elegant lyric address, beautifully inclusive, to all the issues now of greatest concern."—Donald Revell, professor of English, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and author of
The English Boat"
Joyful Orphan a beautiful book of poems that, while quiet and often domestic, have a long, larger view."—Sasha Steensen, professor of English, Colorado State University, and author of
House of Deer"
Joyful Orphan raises the question of belonging, and chooses the position of the orphan, who in Mark Irwin's ecstatic poems, finds home everywhere. Who goes farther than that?"—Claudia Keelan, professor of English, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, editor of
Interim, and author of eight collections of poetry, including
We Step into the SeaTable of Contents
- Contents
- I. Go
- Goes
- Vertigo
- Balloon
- The Dead
- Light
- Letter
- Alive
- Couple
- Blue, Red
- Notre-Dame of Paris, 2019
- Story
- Livestream
- Tree, River
- Hover
- The Life
- II. Home
- Was into Space
- Holiday
- Edges
- Joyful Orphan
- Ash
- The smaller house
- Arrival
- How long?
- Library of Water
- 3D
- Family
- Why—
- We
- Faces
- Hungry
- Radiance
- Wilderness
- Bright in June Sun
- III. Wild
- Nike of Samothrace
- Legend
- All the tiny arrows
- Just once
- Gift
- Livestream
- English
- Plaster of Paris
- Spring, 2020
- Nearer
- Variation on a Phrase by Dickinson
- Trailer for a Movie not yet Made
- 1937 Indian Head Nickel
- La liberté libre
- Thirst
- Pinprick
- Three Panels
- Yet
- Refrain
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
