Invisible Tender (Poets Out Loud) [Paperback]

Jennifer Clarvoe (Author)

Book Description

Series: Poets Out Loud | Publication Date: January 1, 2000

Jennifer Clarvoe's Invisible Tender is the first winner of the annual Poets Out Loud Prize for a book of poetry published each year by Fordham University Press in coordination with Fordham's Poets Out Loud program. Poet J.D. McClatchy, the judge for the 1999 Prize, chose Invisible Tender from among nearly 500 manuscripts entered by poets from around the world. His introduction is included in the volume. The poems collected in Invisible Tender chart the terrains of childhood recollection and adult loss, of meditation and celebration. Intensely lyrical, both employing and altering traditional poetic meters and forms, Clarvoe's poems are rich in philosophical reflection in subjects ranging from art and, popular culture to the elusive languages of the natural world.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jennifer Clarvoe is Associate Professor of English at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ruth's Garden

The Spanish brought the trumpet-shaped petunia and lemons from the Andes. Nineteen-ten saw eucalyptus and wisteria. Montbretia shoots up lush at winter's zenith. Under the fuschia bells, hummingbirds hover and dangle like fishing lures. My neighbor offers over her side-yard fence, an enormous bunch of spinach, trailing its sturdy, dirt-crumbed root. "Take these; I just let them all go old." And then, when I thank her, "It's really no big deal." But then I have to think I haven't heard her right when she lets drop "in vitro fertilization--" Surely she's talking technology for her garden, for the tiny pear-baby yellow and red tomatoes, the plum and beefsteak jostling to bursting the paper sack that she left on my doorstep. This year she's trained the tomatoes over a frame. But no, she says, she's been looking at pictures of triplets, which happen sometimes, looking at pictures of twins. Casually, as she restakes the little front fence protecting her wildflowers, she says only one in four works out at all. It's always seemed to me she could grow anything. In the fairy tale the wife's craving sends her husband over the wall to plunder the witch's garden. And in the myth, the young girl secretly cradles in her cheek five forbidden pomegranate seeds. And in the pregnant dream, her water breaks on a pool table, so she starts to drive herself to the hospital, veers into a field and--feet on either side of the steering wheel-- gives birth to a boy as constellations glide and whirl over the dashboard, silver and black and red, a kaleidoscopic zodiac. Crouching in the garden, her fingers rake and soften the dirt. Thistle and meadowfoam, lupine, thornmint, butterweed, and lily are all endangered, as are checkerbloom and live-forever, I think as I discover dark sugary trails where I've clutched the root to my shirt.

Product Details

• Paperback: 73 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press; 3 edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823220907
• ISBN-13: 978-0823220908
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,842,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars one to read with a cup of tea, January 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Invisible Tender (Poets Out Loud) (Paperback)

This volume feels like it takes place within and just outside the walls of the house you have come to live in. Images of birds, walls, the everyday uneven rhythm of a child and a mother are hemmed by the interior landscape as well as the skunk in the trash. It took me two readings to love this book. The writing is more hushed than a lot of poems coming through the presses at this moment and sometimes lulls the reader into a kind of Clarvoe garden world. However, there are moments of brash clarity that take the reader by surprise and make this a book to keep on a nearby shelf.