In this memorable first book, Kent Shaw explores layers of devotion, illusion, and sacrifice in abstract and personal terms. At age eighteen, he enlisted for six years of service in the U.S. Navy. Midway through, his unadulterated patriotism shifted to unanticipated doubt. Calenture- whose title refers to a sickness sailors suffer as they come to believe the ocean is a meadow, try to walk into it, and find themselves drowning- draws upon rich seagoing metaphors to probe faith, change, and delusion. With poems of ocean and spirit, land and love, family and stranger, this book is anchored and buoyed by a sailor's undeniable longing to experience a great voyage fully and to render it true and whole.
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Calenture is a book about compulsion, that strong kind of yearning often countered by duty. As the waves segment the sea, so Kent Shaw's lines read as at once kept and then utterly free. Faith, desire, myth, or allegiance- what is the current that carries us? 'Who is the swimmer who doesn t feel the silk/ tying his wrists when he pulls himself deeper/ into the lake's thicker folds.' --Sally Keith<br /><br />Beneath so many of the poems of Kent Shaw's Calenture, there s an undertow of devotion that the poems at once resist and gradually give shape to. Against skepticism and apathy, Shaw pitches arguments for something approaching faith and fervor- the resulting poems surprise at every turn. --Carl Phillips<br /><br />Here are prayers unprayed yet answered in advance by oceanic lights and peonies. Only in the poems of Reverdy do I find cadences as reticent and then suddenly voluptuous as Kent Shaw's here in Calenture. This is a book that will remain vivid for a very long time. --Donald Revell
Beneath so many of the poems of Kent Shaw's Calenture, there s an undertow of devotion that the poems at once resist and gradually give shape to. Against skepticism and apathy, Shaw pitches arguments for something approaching faith and fervor- the resulting poems surprise at every turn. --Carl Phillips
Calenture is a book about compulsion, that strong kind of yearning often countered by duty. As the waves segment the sea, so Kent Shaw's lines read as at once kept and then utterly free. Faith, desire, myth, or allegiance- what is the current that carries us? 'Who is the swimmer who doesn t feel the silk/ tying his wrists when he pulls himself deeper/ into the lake's thicker folds.' --Sally Keith
Beneath so many of the poems of Kent Shaw's Calenture, there s an undertow of devotion that the poems at once resist and gradually give shape to. Against skepticism and apathy, Shaw pitches arguments for something approaching faith and fervor- the resulting poems surprise at every turn. --Carl Phillips
Calenture is a book about compulsion, that strong kind of yearning often countered by duty. As the waves segment the sea, so Kent Shaw's lines read as at once kept and then utterly free. Faith, desire, myth, or allegiance- what is the current that carries us? 'Who is the swimmer who doesn t feel the silk/ tying his wrists when he pulls himself deeper/ into the lake's thicker folds.' --Sally Keith
About the Author
Kent Shaw hails from St. Louis and Oklahoma City. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear qualified electrician and served on board the USS Eisenhower, which offered support during the first Gulf War. His poems have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Quarterly West, New Orleans Review, Greensboro Review, American Literary Review, Smartish Pace, and others. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the Creative Writing Program at University of Houston, where he serves as poetry editor at Gulf Coast.
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Kent Shaw recently graduated with a PhD in Creative Writing from University of Houston, where he taught with Writers in the Schools, a nonprofit that sends creative writers into elementary schools to teach writing and creative thinking skills to young students. His first book, Calenture, was published by University of Tampa Press in 2008. Calenture, whose title refers to a delirium sailors suffer at sea where they look out at the ocean and believe it's a meadow, is a lyric meditation on Kent's enlistment in the United States Navy from 1989-1995. Recent poems have been published or are forthcoming in the Believer, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Missouri Review Online, Denver Quarterly and other magazines. Kent is an Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia State University and lives in Huntington with his wife, poet Carrie Oeding.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
a true collection,
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This review is from: Calenture (Hardcover)
I love how these poems work together and the worlds each poem creates. Wow.
from "I Wish I Were the Ocean": It is often necessary to forget--the ocean as a representation of confidence---a stir in the bush it is only a sparrow feeding and 'this' is its quick voice 'this this'--- the ocean has nothing but time---a man keeps watch over the ocean and pretends there is nothing but time
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Into the Ocean,
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This review is from: Calenture (Paperback)
I could compare wading into Shaw's poems like the first time I venture out into the ocean during the first summer trip: slightly intimidating. However, as I got deeper into the repetitive nature of the metaphors and imagery, I discovered I could not, nor did I seek to, escape, which is a theme at the heart of Calenture.
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