Sign-In
Cart
Tea with Osiris
Hardcover
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN10: 0930829557
ISBN13: 9780930829551
Publisher: Lumen Books
Pages: 115
Weight: 2.45
Height: 0.61 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.38
Language: English
ISBN13: 9780930829551
Publisher: Lumen Books
Pages: 115
Weight: 2.45
Height: 0.61 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.38
Language: English
A long-awaited departure from one of the best prose stylists of our day, Tea with Osiris masterfully stirs together myth, trauma, and magic with fiery exuberance. A real treat for the brain cells.-Diane Ackerman Osiris, the Egyptian god-king struck down by his brother Seth, sliced into pieces, and cast into the Nile only to be retrieved and reassembled by his sister Isis to become the god of the dead, serves Paul West as the informing spirit for this book of sonnets that observes his experience of a traumatic stroke and distills a multi-toned harmony: If our sweetest songs are those
that tell of saddest thoughts, sez Osiris,
Then our saddest songs are those
that tell of sweetest thoughts. The first book of poems by West in many years, Tea with Osiris will astonish readers with its formal control-the sonnet's 14 lines corresponding to the sectioning of the god-its exuberant grotesqueries of hospital life, its reinvention of myth, its wit and humor, and, ultimately, its poetic celebration of a devastating visitation. For finally, in the world of Osiris, Our nightmares are what sustain us. Back in the hospital a child
of twelve is screaming, felled
by loss: Where is she?
They hold her close, then down.
Osiris added her to his own.
And the foam from her squandered lip
will take its place among famed
vapors from cuckoo to Lear, aimed
at school children out on a trip,
from Emily BrontA's poisoned menses
to Eva Braun's best pensA(c)es.
All grist for the Osiris mill,
which says, whatever you will,
You shall please me till I kill.
Then our saddest songs are those
that tell of sweetest thoughts. The first book of poems by West in many years, Tea with Osiris will astonish readers with its formal control-the sonnet's 14 lines corresponding to the sectioning of the god-its exuberant grotesqueries of hospital life, its reinvention of myth, its wit and humor, and, ultimately, its poetic celebration of a devastating visitation. For finally, in the world of Osiris, Our nightmares are what sustain us. Back in the hospital a child
of twelve is screaming, felled
by loss: Where is she?
They hold her close, then down.
Osiris added her to his own.
And the foam from her squandered lip
will take its place among famed
vapors from cuckoo to Lear, aimed
at school children out on a trip,
from Emily BrontA's poisoned menses
to Eva Braun's best pensA(c)es.
All grist for the Osiris mill,
which says, whatever you will,
You shall please me till I kill.
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Alighieri, Dante
Pitavy, Francois
Paperback
$33.00
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
$19.94
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Lao Tzu
Paperback
$18.00
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
$18.05
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover
$24.70