God's Loud Hand: Poems [Paperback]

Kelly Cherry (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A multifaceted writer, Cherry ( My Life and Dr. Joyce Brothers ) is difficult to classify. Her fiction is better written than her poetry, yet her poems in this collection have a lyrical rather than a narrative base. Despite the fact that Cherry speaks constantly of God and has a number of poems built around the life of Christ, her understanding of a higher power seems predominantly earth-bound: "At night, God and I slept on our grassy beds, / He in one hut, and I in another." As in the Song of Songs, the lover addressed in these poems is at once mundane and divine. In short, there's nothing surprising in the poet's perceptions. Reading through the volume, one rushes toward the secular poems which fill the second half, only to discover these are even more cliched and intrusively rhymed: "Into darkness, out of light / I plunged. Breathy in midlight, / I lost sight / of all below-- / there was no / bright crescendo. . . ." A suite of short poems written to the music of an unnamed Soviet composer stands out in retrospect as the book at its finest, but even there mundanity is pervasive.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Perhaps inspired by the recent successes of such writers as Robert Bly, many poets are opening up their work to the spiritual, mystical elements of experience. Among these is Cherry (English, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison), whose latest volume begins with a selection (entitled "Common Prayers") of scripture and Old Testament-inspired verse. Here, Cherry is at her best as she moves beyond the literal into the transcendental; her use of rhyme is at times strained (she end-rhymes "guard in" and garden"), at times inventive. In the next section, she offers erotic poems; some have wonderful interior rhyming, but in others the imagery moves disturbingly into self-cruelty. The final section, "Joyful Noise," includes poems ranging from the hilarious tour de force "Grammaire generale," which moves deftly between sexual and grammatical terms, to the boring sentimentality of "Evensong." All in all, this is a very uneven collection; recommended only for comprehensive poetry collections.
- Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr (April 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807118214
• ISBN-13: 978-0807118214
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 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: #1,512,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kelly Cherry is the author of twenty books of fiction (long and short), poetry, memoir, essay, and criticism. She has also published eight chapbooks and translations of two classical dramas. Her most recent titles are The Woman Who: Stories, The Retreats of Thought: Poems, and Girl in a Library: On Women Writers & The Writing Life. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South and has won three PEN/Syndicated Fiction awards. Her story collection The Society of Friends (which has nothing to do with the Society of Friends) received the Dictionary of Literary Biography Award for Short Fiction for the best collection published in 1999. For her poetry she received the Hanes Prize for a body of work. Her new and selected poems, titled Hazard and Prospect, was a finalist for the Poets' Award. Cherry says, "I write because I have ideas that can be realized only by writing. Luckily, I love to write. And I love the thought that somewhere there may be someone who reads my work and responds to the heart of what I write."

Another book of poems is scheduled for 2013. She is completing a new book of stories and working on a book-length poem. After that there will be another book of stories (the third in her trilogy of short story collections set in Madison, Wisconsin), a memoir, and a novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book that will inspire poets and readers alike., February 6, 1998

By 

Wade Newman (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: God's Loud Hand: Poems (Hardcover)

"God's Loud Hand" is Kelly Cherry's strongest poetry collection to date. In it she demonstrates a masterful balance between form and content. Her religious/spiritual themes lead the reader toward higher ground, especially "Reasons", "In the Garden By the Sea: Easter", "The Island of Contentment", and "God's Friends Will Wear Rain*bows". They are unique in an era when most poets are still writing about what they see in their mirrors. Cherry's monumental sequence, "Songs for a Soviet Composer," is an example of pure alchemy, in that she turns the anguish of love's longing into stanzas which glint like gold but touch us like flesh which has become Words. Kelly Cherry is a poet who has risen above the rabble.