{"product_id":"testament","title":"Testament","description":"\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display: none;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display: none;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display: none;\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eIn this book-length poem, G.C. Waldrep addresses matters as diverse as Mormonism, cymatics, race, Dolly the cloned sheep, and his own life and faith. Drafted over twelve trance-like days while in residence at Hawthornden Castle, Waldrep responds to such poets as Alice Notley, Lisa Robertson, and Carla Harryman, and tackles the question of whether gender can be a lyric form. Intimately autobiographical, Waldrep\u003cspan\u003e’\u003c\/span\u003es fifth book masterly takes its own place in the American tradition of the long poem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExcerpt from \u003cspan\u003e“\u003c\/span\u003ePart ll\u003cbr\u003eNotes from a City Silence Fled\u003cspan\u003e”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eHow speech works: the body co-opts\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003elanguage and vamps a matinee performance,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ei.e. the body holds language up\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ein front of itself, as if it were a mask.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSometimes language, like napalm,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003emelts into the face, throat, chest,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003egenitals of the speaker. Unlike napalm,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ethis can seem painless. Some people\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003edon’t notice until the performance\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eis over. Some people never notice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSometimes a mask keeps talking\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003elong after the negotiating body\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ehas retired, fallen away or disappeared.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e(Call this literature.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSign language: merger of body\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ewith mask. It’s why some of us find\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ethe deaf so threatening, so Other.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eA gender we haven’t sexualized yet,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ea plane crash dooming an orchestra.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere, listen to this, you say.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eI take the headphones. It sounds\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003elike a bunch of planets talking.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eIt \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eis \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ea bunch of planets talking, you say.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eSometimes the world impresses,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003emerely through superior fidelity\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePraise for Testament\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“\u003c\/span\u003eIn a theology of an altered trinity—eye, bee, flower—\u003cem\u003eTestament \u003c\/em\u003easks readers, \u003cem\u003eCan gender be a lyric form?\u003c\/em\u003e An epic paean to the moral imagination, Waldrep’s book-length poem \u003cspan\u003e‘\u003c\/span\u003everbs\u003cspan\u003e’\u003c\/span\u003e or predicates the corporeal and invisible through languages of faith, light, history, and mystery: \u003cspan\u003e‘\u003c\/span\u003eAurora dentata. Light with teeth,\u003cspan\u003e’\u003c\/span\u003e or 'the body as a museum for light.\u003cspan\u003e’\u003c\/span\u003e With the attentive rigor of an exegesis scholar in ever-shifting contexts of a postmodern world, Waldrep also parses our relationship to nature as one of symbiotic bifurcations: \u003cspan\u003e‘\u003c\/span\u003eThe pastoral wanders \/ about looking for us. Without us \/ the pastoral is nothing: metamorphic occlusions, \/ some generative organs of flowers \u0026amp; trees.\u003cspan\u003e’\u003c\/span\u003e Versed in sundry fields of knowledge—physics, micrographia, hermeneutics, and slippery modes of knowing in our age of indeterminacy—Waldrep’s latest book still testifies to \u003cspan\u003e‘\u003c\/span\u003ethis oriency, this brilliance, this luster.\u003cspan\u003e’\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—Karen An-hwei Lee\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“\u003c\/span\u003eG.C. Waldrep knows the problem: \u003cspan\u003e‘\u003c\/span\u003eFirst you make the tools \/ out of nothing. And from the tools, \/ you must make nothing. Then, out of nothing, \/ you must remake the tools.' Easier said than done. Of course, what Waldrep shows, in this book of sly mysticism and ontological devotion, is that all saying is a kind of doing, pulling up with the shovel of words those artifacts that also deepen the hole from which they’re dug. This long poem refuses to divorce phenomenological depth away from those daily surfaces that in their dazzle blind us to ideal truths; it also refuses to let \u003cspan\u003e‘\u003c\/span\u003eideal truths\u003cspan\u003e’\u003c\/span\u003e occlude those swerves into error the human heart makes as its hopeful sacrifice to whatever a living faith might be. \u003cem\u003eTestament\u003c\/em\u003e gives me some half-lit glimpse of such a faith. It’s one that trusts the ancient modes of thought and feeling wander through the same labyrinth we find ourselves in, reciprocal bewilderment, reciprocal hope that each to the other lends some meaning neither possesses itself. Ironic without succumbing to mere irony, faithful without surrendering to dogma, Waldrep offers us his most necessary book, one that asks with us that question we fear ourselves to ask: how is this real, any of it, all of it, faith, language, light, history, and that cipher that collects them all, the human heart.\u003cspan\u003e”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—Dan Beachy-Quick\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“\u003c\/span\u003eHere are predicates with no apparent subject, as if work were being done, masterless. Just so capital and its dresses move behind the scenes and before our very eyes. The mind as separate, severed from the world. But song too can be agentless, moving sometimes of its own accord. These poems posit not just language as labyrinth (in which we seek the connecting thread), but also, importantly, language as plea for scale, to keep in focus both the golden sensorium lacing the body and the laws and forces hovering over it.\u003cspan\u003e”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—Eleni Sikelianos\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch6\u003ePublication Date: May 12, 2015\u003cbr\u003eISBN: \u003cstrong\u003e978-1-938160-63-9\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h6\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e© BOA Editions, Ltd. 2015\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display: none;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display: none;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display: none;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"display: none;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOA Editions, Ltd.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":8420388485,"sku":"9781938160639","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/products\/Testament_Front_compressed.jpg?v=1527683357","url":"https:\/\/shop.boaeditions.org\/products\/testament","provider":"Boa Editions","version":"1.0","type":"link"}