Whether exploring the porous borders between sin and virtue or examining the lives of saints and mystics to find the human experiences in stories of the divine, the poems in No Confession, No Mass move toward restoration and reunion.
Jennifer Perrine’s poems ask what healing might be possible in the face of sexual and gendered violence worldwide—in New Delhi, in Steubenville, in Juárez, and in neighborhoods and homes never named in the news. The book reflects on our own complicity in violence, “not confessing, but unearthing” former selves who were brutal and brutalized—and treating them with compassion. As the poems work through these seeming paradoxes, they also find joy, celebrating transformations and second chances, whether after the failure of a marriage, the return of a reluctant soldier from war, or the everyday passage of time.
Through the play of language in received forms—abecedarian, sonnet, ballad, ghaza
Trade Review
“No Confession, No Mass is lyrical, inventive, and full of surprises, offering us fresh ways of seeing old stories. The music is a delight throughout—agile and apt—language enjoying itself! Jennifer Perrine writes: ‘and returned her whole, startled raw, launched her back into the world.’ This is what fine poetry can do—and No Confession, No Mass does it.”—Ellen Bass, author of Like a Beggar
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
I.
Invocation: [Saint] Genevieve
The Mother, the Girl, the Mirror That Speaks
To Chant Back the Summer
Humility | Pride
For the Lone Man at the Violence Prevention Center
Embarrassment: from baraço (halter)
Envy | Kindness
After My Mother’s Death, I Feel Nothing
II.
Invocation: [Saint] Euphrosyne
A Theory of Violence
The Divorcée’s Fable
Song of the Bystander
Piblokto
A Theory of Violence
’Tis of Thee
Greed | Charity
Mobility
Patience | Wrath
A Theory of Violence
III.
Invocation: The Blessed Girl, after Her Visions and Vows
Self-Portrait as Francis Bacon
Letter to Half a Lifetime Ago
Love Song with Condemned Building
Lust
Call Me
Lust | Chastity
Yoke
Wild Child (Slight Return)
I Would Rather Die a Thousand Deaths
Ode to the Motorcycle
Dead Letter
IV.
Invocation: [Saint] Pharaïldis
Pastoral for Our Uncharted Territories
Fishwife
Temperance | Gluttony
The Mystic Speaks of Attachment
Confidence Game
Wow and Flutter
Diligence | Sloth
Elegy for My Morbid Curiosity
Happiness: from hap (fortune, luck)
Coronal
Seconds
