Patterns of Descent: Poems [Hardcover]

Richard Foerster (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This densely written book is filled with images of water and water birds, growing plants, and flowers, and it is haunted by images of ghosts, the bedrock of memory, and the passion of uncertainty. Here are ponderings that feature such nicely turned phrases as the endlines of "Atmospherics," a poem on the waxing and waning of life and death: "We wanted life spinning like springwheels / on an axis, but disorder was the pattern, / vast and immutable, that had played on our senses. / It was the beauty of chaos we didn't understand." Or consider "Covenant," written for a dead friend's father: "A hawk is soaring in tightening loops," then "stoops" into a pattern of descent, a "predatory fall." "It's nature" is the nostrum spoken in the face of "the aborted / squeal of field prey," yet Foerster finds such reconciliation for nature's taking of lives hard "when a parent's hurled / in grief's inhabitable hell." This is powerful work in which shadows of death and loss linger. Whitney Scott

Product Details

• Hardcover: 94 pages
• Publisher: Orchises Pr (November 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0914061364
• ISBN-13: 978-0914061366
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,838,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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