The Black Beach: Poems

by Barbarese, J. T.

• ISBN13: 9781574411881
• ISBN10: 1574411888
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-30
• Publisher: Texas A & M Univ Pr

Summary

The Poems of The Black Beach describe everyday acts like putting children to bed, coaching Little League, and sending a daughter to school, but brood over what may be behind the everyday and how to reach it and talk to it. Faith ebbs and flows like the tide on a "black beach of heaven," while these poems maintain skepticism, denying transcendence beyond what is available through love, the senses, and experience.

Author Biography

J. T. Barbarese teaches at Rutgers University-Camden and lives in Philadelphia.

Table of Contents

Walk your body down	p. 3
During	p. 4
Onward	p. 5
Memorial Day	p. 6
Teaching the slider	p. 7
Trying to be penitent	p. 9
Politics	p. 11
On the 7-something to Penn Station	p. 12
Today on sports radio WIP	p. 13
Paper, scissors, rock	p. 14
The prophet	p. 15
Elegy	p. 16
Close call in Valley Green	p. 17
The merman	p. 18
Number 99, Brian Santoro	p. 19
Spinoza	p. 20
The ones	p. 21
Poem in a time of infinite justice	p. 22
The leaf on the floor	p. 24
Sea-wrack religion	p. 29
This	p. 31
Pity	p. 32
Poem to my daughter on her eighteenth birthday	p. 34
Vision in the Flourtown Mall, Saturday	p. 35
The lost beatitudes	p. 37
Carapace	p. 39
Suddenly	p. 40
Holding my face to my son's tee-shirt	p. 41
Hearing Roy Orbison on the tape loop at Starbucks	p. 42
Three prayers : cantico del sol	p. 43
Three prayers : gloria	p. 43
Three prayers : act of contrition	p. 44
Dream-talking with General Massoud	p. 47
Joy	p. 48
The landscape wants to be understood slowly	p. 49
A noise of crows	p. 50
Cities of God	p. 51
Anisette	p. 52
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