{"product_id":"to-keep-love-blurry","title":"To Keep Love Blurry","description":"\u003cp\u003eInspired by Robert Lowell’s \u003cem\u003eLife Studies\u003c\/em\u003e, Craig Morgan Teicher’s \u003cem\u003eTo Keep Love Blurry\u003c\/em\u003e is an exploration of the charged and troubled spaces between intimately connected people: husbands and wives, parents and children, writers and readers. These poems include sonnets, villanelles, and long poems, as well as two poetic prose pieces, all meditating on the relationship between truth and art. As a son becomes a husband and then a father, Teicher expertly probes a life recast as poetry, with poems that long to leap into the lives of their subjects.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“The Past Ahead”\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI find myself looking forward to the past,\u003cbr\u003e confident remembering will lengthen it,\u003cbr\u003e that even forgetting will make it last\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e a little longer, as all the amassed\u003cbr\u003e memory returns in flashes bit by bit.\u003cbr\u003e It seems so accessible, so near, the past,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eas though it were my own very vast\u003cbr\u003e place, neither behind nor ahead, easy to visit.\u003cbr\u003e The \u003ci\u003efact\u003c\/i\u003e that it doesn’t last\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e makes no sense. I hardly have to cast\u003cbr\u003e thoughts backward before I inhibit\u003cbr\u003e—so why not look forward to?—the past,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003efull of real things I can pick up—the glass\u003cbr\u003e dancer my mother loved, the statuette\u003cbr\u003e my father bought her for their last\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e anniversary, the anniversary of which just passed.\u003cbr\u003e She’s dead; that’s all that caused their split.\u003cbr\u003e She’s all I’d go back for; otherwise the past\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eis forgettable at last. The dead last.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eTo Keep Love Blurry\u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e“\u003c\/span\u003eThe book risks most everything poetry can risk: family, reputation, legacy, privacy. The spirits of dead parents mix with a spouse and children and colleagues, and then, there’s Robert Lowell, who presides over this entire volume in a ghostly fashion that should get Harold Bloom’s attention.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e—Publishers Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “The majority of poems in this new work from Teicher… employ form in the best sense of the word– as a frame, not a crutch… When at his best, Teicher’s poems are formal and–as a welcome bonus– amusing.”\u003cstrong\u003e—\u003cem\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “The closing couplet of a sonnet or a Shakespearean scene signals a swift turn and the lingering note of finality that will continue to resonate so dramatically that it literally gives us pause. Teicher takes this familiar pattern as a starting point and varies his reinvention of it so thoroughly as to sound the heavens with its infinite measures. Herein, a long period of grief for which there is no comfort in form. A salacious glance at bodies reined in by exacting rhymes. A liberating push-back against the idea of economy. More play, more improvisation, and more defiantly deadpan humor – this is the vital shot-in-the-arm American poetry needs. And who would have thought it would arrive in such a disarmingly honest voice? The brilliance of these poems is how they renovate not only poetry but language, without pretense, without the declaration of war, without summoning the ghost of Shakespeare in any but the most charming ways. I could live in the mind of these poems and never want to leave. The nice thing is, as a guest at Teicher’s party in poetry’s honor: I get to dally among the roses.”  \u003cstrong\u003e—D. A. Powell\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch6\u003ePublication Date: August 21, 2012\u003cbr\u003eISBN: 978-1-934414-93-4\u003c\/h6\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e© BOA Editions, Ltd. 2012\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":null,"offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":8420213893,"sku":"978-1-934414-93-4","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/products\/tokeeploveblurry.jpeg?v=1527683768","url":"https:\/\/shop.boaeditions.org\/products\/to-keep-love-blurry","provider":"Boa Editions","version":"1.0","type":"link"}