In this second wise and passionate book, Tom Andrews explores illness as a major theme, avoiding sentimentality without being merely confessional. He advances his considerable talent with great strength and forcefulness. The poems ae buoyant with humor and mindful of larger mysteries even as they investigate very personal issues. There is an urgency that is compelling; the work is immersed in the private grief of the speaker without excluding the reader. There is real and hard-won wisdom and intelligence in the poems, offering genuine surprises and delight; their attractive humility is not a pose.
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Andrews's ( The Brother's Country ) second book, a winner of the 1993 Iowa Poetry Prize, concerns his own illness and a brother's passing. This is delicate writing, as Andrews's voice considers the shadow world of death and retrieves mercy and the mystery of life. The graceful title poem, a hymn of gratitude, describes motocross racing and an injury that threatens the author's life. "May He adore each moment alive in the whirring world," writes Andrews, and "may the Lord hear our listening, His word like matchlight cupped to a cigarette /the instant before the intake of breath." What he does well is take the metaphysical realm and make it physical in words. In "When Comfort Arrives," he writes, "You're walking, disappearing into a stand of elms / at evening, the way thought disappears before sleep." And "Hymning the Kanawha" describes his brother's every-other-day dialysis and the disease's progress. The last third of the book is a meditation from a hospital bed. "Codeine Diary" was written after Andrews fell on ice and started bleeding in his joints and near his spine. The writing, mostly prose, keeps intimacy and compassion ahead of terror and pain. Andrews clarifies for himself--and us--how life is able to present an "astonishing calm" of humor and wisdom, just out of death's reach.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"The fresh crispness and limpid clarity of Tom Andrews' poems give them a distinct brightness and accessibility. These are not poems about illness. They are about the dominion of the spirit when it is rich in imaginination and courage."-- Guy Davenport
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A celebration of life,
By Tony Phillips (Ind) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle (Iowa Poetry Prize) (Paperback)
Poet Tom Andrews, (whom I once had for a professor), is intent of living life to the fullest in spite of having hemophilia. The part about how he avoided contracting AIDS, but avoided doing so were really scary, as they must have been for him. Even though this is his first book not strictly of poetry, again Andrews demonstrates his ability to draw poetical inspiration from such things as lying in a hospital bed with a severe joint bleed. In spite of what a review in Entertainment Weekly said, the final chapter, in which he tell how hemophilia has affected him personnally is the most powerful section of the book.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lets you hear the divine breath of God on the other side of pain,
By
This review is from: The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle (Iowa Poetry Prize) (Paperback)
These free-verse poems relate the story of Tom Andrew's recovery in hospital after slipping on an icy sidewalk, fracturing several bones and filling his frozen joints with blood--a condition we doctors call "hemarthrosis," an excrutiating state almost unique to hemophiliacs. Transported by the alternate deliria of pain and his morphine, Tom regards his existence from a distance while visiting with his constant companions: physical agony, God, and lyrical verse. The poems also help us understand the life of a man who watched his older brother succumb at an early age to the same disease, but who would not let it kill his spirit. (The title refers to his days as a teenage motocross rider, who would infuse himself with clotting factors to allow him not to die from minor injuries while racing his bike wearing a jersey emblazoned with the slogan "Powered by Christ.") The piece "Praying With George Herbert In Late Winter" will touch the heart of any reader who has survived a dark period of their life through the succor of poetry. Tom's religious faith is not lambent, but hard-bitten: "I can say there is a larger something inside me./ I can say, 'Gratitude/ is a strange country.'/But what/ would I give/ to live there?" As someone with little stock in organized Christianity, I found Tom Andrews compelling and ferocious. I first read his poems in 1996 and they have stayed in my heart ever since.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Listmania!
|
|
