Liver

by Webb, Charles Harper

• ISBN13: 9780299165741
• ISBN10: 0299165744
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

The poems in Liver come at the reader from many angles at once, like a whirlwind or a warm shower. Charles Harper Webb is a poet of contradictions: humor and heartbreak, depth and accessibility, playfulness and seriousness, raw energy and careful craft. His poems glorify the spirit, but also the flesh, exemplified by the liver, the "organ whose name contains the injunction Live!... great One-Who-Lives, so we can too." Even at their darkest, their most outraged and sorrowing, Webb's poems affirm the world, and help us live in it gladly.

Author Biography

Charles Harper Webb is professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, as well as a psychotherapist in private practice. He has previously published a novel, The Wilderness Effect, and a book of poems, Reading the Water, and has edited two other collections of poetry.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Part I
Wedding Dress	3	(2)
The Weight of Knowledge	5	(2)
The Lighthearted Story of a Young Girl Raised by Trolls	7	(2)
Myopia	9	(2)
Over the Town	11	(2)
Biblical Also-Rans	13	(2)
Persistence of Sound	15	(2)
Musk Turtle	17	(2)
Heart	19	(1)
Von Osten, His Teacher, Speaks of Clever Hans	20	(2)
Tone of Voice	22	(1)
Beachcomber Hotel, Papeete	23	(2)
Floating Loin	25	(3)
Tenderness in Men	28	(1)
Towel Boy	29	(8)
Part II
Lost Lives	37	(2)
The Age of Orange: A History Inferred from Sentences in the Oxford English Dictionary	39	(3)
Rumpelstiltskin Convention	42	(2)
The Secret History of Rock & Roll	44	(3)
Stegosaurus	47	(2)
Tarantula	49	(2)
Watch for Deer	51	(2)
Cherubs	53	(2)
Munchausen's Syndrome	55	(2)
Gifts	57	(1)
Scarcity	58	(2)
Legacy	60	(1)
``Octopus''	61	(2)
Trust	63	(2)
Prozac	65	(2)
The Function of Poetry	67	(1)
Byron, Keats, and Shelley	68	(2)
Poem on My Anniversary	70	(3)
Part III
Someone Else's Good News	73	(2)
Photo Titled ``Birth''	75	(1)
Lampwick	76	(2)
Coach Class Seats	78	(2)
Confidence	80	(2)
George	82	(3)
Mother Asleep	85	(2)
At Summer's End	87	(2)
Losing My Hair	89	(2)
It's Good That Old People Get Crotchety	91	(2)
Love Poetry	93	(2)
Identifying with the Buddha	95	(3)
Chapel in the Pines	98	(2)
Inheritance	100	(2)
Liver	102	(4)
Descent	106