Blessings and Inclemencies: Poems [Paperback]

Constance Merritt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2007

Wrested from the coppery, keen claws of existential extremity, Blessings and Inclemencies, Constance Merritt's second collection of poems, is conventional in its forms and radical in its reaching back to the ground of being and to the originality and immediacy of our first encounters with language. Forgoing the common hedge of irony, these poems, without apology, place their bets on elemental language, intentional grace, and tradition in all its fruitfulness and freight.

By turns passionate and distant, these poems manage at once to ensnare and elude us, and in their urgent quest for clarity seldom fail to compel us.

I will make a start tomorrow. Thus resolved,
I close my eyes and let myself be pulled
Over the wide water and down and down.
A sharpness in my mouth, crowding my throat--
Vinegar, clay, absinthe, honey, sorrow.
I'm swaddled in the singing flesh of others.
Rhea's womb, the roiling gut of Cronus.
Blood sings the world a lullaby--The only world entire. And she is there
Slumbering, deep curled inside Demeter who
Is not Demeter yet, the Separate On
e As yet unborn. He will learn to make
Distinctions: child/stone, number, case, and gender;
Deliver us to history from bliss.

From "Among Shades: A Fragment" published in Blessings and Inclemenciesby Constance Merritt.
Copyright © 2007 by Constance Merritt. All rights reserved.

72 pages, 5.5 x 9

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The poems of Merritt's second collection take on big ideas: I've seen the world without us, and it lacked/ Nothing, but burned on fierce and beautiful. Merritt (A Protocol for Touch) grounds her generalities in powerful, gorgeous lyrical moments, and there is little of the irony that marks the work of many of her contemporaries. Merritt's speakers plainly search for something to hold onto, and it's not meaning: she notes that sense does not make birdsong beautiful. She uses the ear, that outward/ heart as her guide—many of these poems rhyme, both subtly and obviously, and all show a careful attention to shape and rhythm. Even the collection as a whole is carefully sculpted, with five sequences creating an arc that begins and ends with speakers searching for comfort and tenderness amid a world where/ daily the tongues of men murder even/ the sturdiest hearts. There are moment when Merritt's love of rhyme leads to either antiquated (Lest sober elders hear and come to chide) or worn-out phrases (the fabric of a life), and some readers may be put off by her tendency to lean on the Greek myths at times. Still, the heights achieved in the best of these poems are undeniable. (Oct.)
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About the Author

Constance Merritt's poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and the New Yorker, among other publications. A Protocol for Touch, her first poetry collection, was the 1999 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry selection and a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Book Award. Merritt lives in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 70 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press; First Edition edition (September 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807132586
• ISBN-13: 978-0807132586
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.4 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,868,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "And warm the dank cold mindcave with quick fire", February 26, 2008

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This review is from: Blessings and Inclemencies: Poems (Paperback)

BLESSINGS AND INCLEMENCIES, Constance Merritt's second published collection of poetry, is best read aloud so the cadences and the rhythms may swirl from the tongue through the ears to reverberate in the mind. Let the echoes and caprices of memories, nature, and classical gods linger.

"Isn't it the naming that we love" the poet wonders, and surely the verses in
Prologue: Song: At the Edge of the Sea,
I. Requiem,
II. Among Shades: A Fragment,
III. Turning: A Sequence, and
Epilogue: Chamber Music
give both beatific and remorseful tribute to this very human current of desire.

"Charon plies his oars. Sweat glistens / On his grizzled brow..." as Merritt steers out into deep waters of loss. "Don't go and leave me stranded on this shore," she entreats. She rages against the inevitability of the deaths of loved ones and pounds the notion that the guiding hand of an Almighty can make all things well: "Let others justify / the ways of God to men; she never would / She'd already stood the s.o.b. on trial."

Yet the mourning poet is yet here, not turning to loam, so "At three o'clock, I wake to rain" and "...know it is I who will labor to be born." Then "...the lengthening light, the robin's song / That wakes me... / (For the first time in my life I want to see!)." Merritt is, after all, a sightless poet, and, as the blind do, she expands the reach and delicacy of her other senses. By way of illustration, she mingles her own poetry of heightened sensitivity with the verse of Hilda Raz: "My every organ sings you like a psalm: Sun, sun come to me here, come here I am."

In BLESSINGS AND INCLEMENCIES, beauty and poignancy consort with uncomforted mourning. Love answers every call on its own terms; but friends, family, and lovers whom death parts, but cannot be returned so..."Me, I'd like to think the rhythm moved / Us, until the dance, itself, was what we loved."