These intense and intelligent poems resist oblivion and void in an infinite process of fulfillment of potentiality. Beginning with death, they evolve into the immortality of transformation. A dead star becomes marsh, a disintegrated sun sings in the rubbings and gratings of the red-legged locust. The mind, ancestor of the sky, contemplates "the nature of itself/ In the motion of stars"; "the mind /Has been obligated from the beginning/ To create an ordered universe/ AS the only possible proof/ OF its own inheritance." Uniting and separating, splitting and binding."
Pattiann Rogers see mythic patterns in the changing motions of the universe - "green grain of jelly-seed rotating slowly, / Turning by multiple yellow hairs to place/ Its cold side trapped in a cathedral, transfigured by light of the shinning dove;; a whale aligning "its narrow eye" to "the bright star - point of Polaris." Her poetry is metaphysical and physical, intellectual and sensuous, it has a controlled passion that joins body and spirit - "the soul believes of itself." It finds energy and healing in the dream of life.
- ISBN10 0819521728
- ISBN13 9780819521729
- Publish Date 1 August 1989 (first published 1 July 1989)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 9 July 1999
- Publish Country US
- Publisher University Press of New England
- Imprint Wesleyan University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 56
- Language English