absolute animal
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absolute animal
Poems that traverse and question the boundary between human and animal behavior.
Experimenting with time, language, and transgressing boundaries, the poems in absolute animal lean into Nabokov’s notion that precision belongs to poetry and intuition to science.
Rachel DeWoskin’s new collection navigates the chaos of societal and mortal uncertainty. Through formal poetry, DeWoskin finds sense amid disorder and unearths connections between the animal and the human, between the ancient and the contemporary, and between languages, incorporating translations from poems dating as far back as the Tang dynasty. From sonnet sequences about heart surgeries to examinations of vole romance and climate change, absolute animal investigates and moves across boundaries and invites us to consider what holds life, what lasts, what dies, and what defines and enriches the experience of being human.
Experimenting with time, language, and transgressing boundaries, the poems in absolute animal lean into Nabokov’s notion that precision belongs to poetry and intuition to science.
Rachel DeWoskin’s new collection navigates the chaos of societal and mortal uncertainty. Through formal poetry, DeWoskin finds sense amid disorder and unearths connections between the animal and the human, between the ancient and the contemporary, and between languages, incorporating translations from poems dating as far back as the Tang dynasty. From sonnet sequences about heart surgeries to examinations of vole romance and climate change, absolute animal investigates and moves across boundaries and invites us to consider what holds life, what lasts, what dies, and what defines and enriches the experience of being human.
Table of Contents
anthrosphere
attention
the animal question
sestina for the snake in a man-made lake
ways to love and leave you
social hour vole
when we say they
hunt
unseasonable
chemical peel
taxidermy
heathkit tv 1980
my dad’s socially distant heart surgery
his meds
arrhythmia
feel it if
these days i keep falling
back
estrangement
poem on returning (by he zhizhang)
on the eve of government exams to secretary zhang (by zhu qingyu)
climbing white stork tower (by wang zhihuan)
halfway (by li bai)
drinking alone under the moon (by li bai)
snapshots of what’s called for
some girls
dressing
let me be
vanity
a surgeon sawed me open, sewed me up
double body, hot lasagna
taunting the turkey vultures with love
tiny staples
fear
chance, chicago
sunset/sonnet
airplane landscape, 1992, true story
landing
dream view from above
your death
tenacity
acknowledgments
attention
the animal question
sestina for the snake in a man-made lake
ways to love and leave you
social hour vole
when we say they
hunt
unseasonable
chemical peel
taxidermy
heathkit tv 1980
my dad’s socially distant heart surgery
his meds
arrhythmia
feel it if
these days i keep falling
back
estrangement
poem on returning (by he zhizhang)
on the eve of government exams to secretary zhang (by zhu qingyu)
climbing white stork tower (by wang zhihuan)
halfway (by li bai)
drinking alone under the moon (by li bai)
snapshots of what’s called for
some girls
dressing
let me be
vanity
a surgeon sawed me open, sewed me up
double body, hot lasagna
taunting the turkey vultures with love
tiny staples
fear
chance, chicago
sunset/sonnet
airplane landscape, 1992, true story
landing
dream view from above
your death
tenacity
acknowledgments