Practicing for Heaven

by Levine, Julia B.

• ISBN13: 9780938078623
• ISBN10: 0938078623
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-09-01
• Publisher: Small Pr Distribution

Summary

Poetry. Winner of the 1998 Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Stranded in that clockless month of her arrival,/ I listen to our neighbor sawing down back doors,/ rock her, tiny fists of breath uncurling,/ while the details of each afternoon are revealed. This is a luminous, breath-stopping book. Each poem is complete, each renders an intense encounter between the poet and what she loves: the 'sensate world' in all its complexity of color, contour, and human emotion. ... The eye makes us look while the words impel us toward feeling something of the poet's present -- a present charged with memories, hopes, and a sensitivity like that of the fontanelle: the soft spot on a baby's head invoked in one of the most striking poems in this brilliant first book -- Margaret W. Ferguson.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	v
I
Walking Beside the American River	3	(1)
Vigil in Cherry Season	4	(2)
Fourth of July	6	(1)
Why Numbers Never End	7	(1)
Abduction Under the Hubble Telescope	8	(1)
Where We Sleep	9	(1)
In Spring	10	(5)
Strand Line	15	(1)
Angels	16	(1)
My Gemini	17	(4)
II
Touching Wild Animals	21	(1)
Fire	22	(1)
The Girl I was Saving	23	(1)
Nights on Lake Michigan	24	(1)
At Fourteen	25	(2)
Afterward	27	(1)
Looking at Prokudin-Gorskii's Photographs for the Tsar	28	(2)
Hunting Wild Mushrooms	30	(1)
The winter he left	31	(2)
First Day of the New Year	33	(1)
Driving Through Montana	34	(3)
III
Overdue	37	(1)
Fontanelle	38	(3)
Rio Vista	41	(1)
Before Language Speaks the Loss	42	(1)
Baltimore	43	(1)
By Heart	44	(1)
The Distance Apart from Her	45	(6)
Indian Summer	51	(1)
El Nino	52	(1)
Salmon Run on the Consumnes River	53	(1)
Migration	54	(3)
IV
At the Oyster Company Camp	57	(1)
The Instructions	58	(1)
After reading that you have died	59	(1)
Fidelity	60	(2)
Counting As She Does In Summer	62	(2)
Deadlock	64	(1)
Watching Hale-Bopp with an Old Friend	65	(2)
After despair	67	(2)
Stillwater Cove	69	(1)
In the Tidal Fields	70	(1)
At the Vernal Pools	71	(1)
When I no longer wanted to die	72	(2)
Blue Moon	74	(1)
Windstorm on the Marsh	75	(4)
About the Author	79