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A treatise on stars

Berssenbrugge, Mei-mei, 1947-2020
Book
This collection of poems extends the intensely phenomenological poetics of 'The Star Field' in Empathy, which appeared over thirty years ago. The book is structured as a continuous enfolding of poems, each made up of numbered serial parts, their presiding poetic consciousness moving from the desert arroyo of New Mexico to the white-tailed deer of Maine and between conversations with daughter, husband, friends, pets (corn snake and poodle), and a woman, or star-visitor, beneath a tree who calls 'any spirit in matter ... star-walking.' These are poems of deep listening and patient waiting, open to the channeling of daily experience, to gestalt and angel, dolphins and extraterrestrials. Here, family is a type of constellation and 'thought is a form of organized light.' All our senses are activated by Berssenbrugge's light absorbing lines, lines that map a geography of interconnected intelligence-interdimensional intelligence-that exists in all sentient objects and sustains us. This is not new age poetry but poetry for a new age, rigorous of thought and grounded in the physical world where 'days fill with splendor, and earth offers its pristine beauty to an expanding present.
Main title:
A treatise on stars / Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.
Imprint:
New York : New Directions Books, 2020.©2020
Collation:
101 pages ; 20 x 22 cm.
Series title:
Awards:
Finalist for National Book Award for Poetry, 2020.
ISBN:
9780811229388 (pbk)9780811229388 (paperback)
Dewey class:
811.54
Language:
English
BRN:
706326
LocationCollectionCall numberStatus/Desc
Kathleen Syme Carlton-LiteratureLITER 811.54 BERSAvailable
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