Strange Pieta

by Fraser, Gregory

• ISBN13: 9780896725447
• ISBN10: 0896725448
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-30
• Publisher: Texas Tech Univ Pr

Summary

Gregory Fraser's work displays a wrenching emotional depth and a painful sensitivity in its survey of the lacrimae rerum lying beneath our everyday world. But perhaps even more remarkable than this density of feeling in every line is the formal restraint and control that makes his a poetry of the first order rather than mere complaint. It's a resounding triumph of strictly ordered emotion. A compelling exploration of illness and family life, memory and desire, friendship and loss, Strange Pieta focuses on the poet's relationship with his brother Jonathan, who was born with spina bifida, a congenital disorder that left him physically and mentally disabled. In rich and often wrenching detail, Fraser describes the emotional turmoil, familial dysfunction, and complex social responses arising from the birth of a handicapped child. What emerge from Fraser's examination of cultural standards of normalcy and those aspects of the self and others that are often considered freakish, unnatural, or "monstrous" is a poetry of poignancy and intellectual rigor, of private discoveries and larger questions about faith, beauty, and the redemptive power of art. By Turns urgent tender, skeptical, and wry, Fraser's work counterposes complexity of thought with clarity of language and imagery. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Gregory Fraser teaches literature and creative writing at the State University of West Georgia.

Table of Contents

Series editor's introduction

Ars Poetica

Down Time

Ignis Fatuus

Lemon

Coward

A Friend's Divorce

Cruiser

Still Life

End of Days

How It Happened

How to Begin a Poetry Reading

The Sign

Work

Losing Father's Pocketwatch

Bluegills

Blood Work

Glass

Rejoice

Strange Pieta

Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.