Sweet Confluence

by Ludvigson, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780807126202
• ISBN10: 0807126209
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Summary

One of the first poems in Sweet Confluence, "Gratitude" heralds the collection's project: "More and more I see / how everything goes together....Surely the body is mind's / gift to the soul". The joining that our selves -- mind, body, and soul, so diverse in aspects -- strive for is, as Susan Ludvigson puts it, "the sweet confluence / of salt and sun, of ache / and thrust". In new poems and old, Sweet Confluence turns and returns to themes of art, music, landscape, and family that have feathered this poet's lush expressive output over the past twenty-five years.

Twenty new poems explore the fluidly interconnected states of being: memory, emotion, sleep, thought, and sensation, among others. Disclosing an acceptance of the world as it is, never refusing or diminishing life's full and reaching reality, Ludvigson possesses a joyous maturity that dovetails with the youthful urgency to know and understand exhibited in her early work. Selected pieces range from the long persona poems emphasizing Christ's humanness in Trinity to poems from The Beautiful Noon of No S

Author Biography

Susan Ludvigson teaches at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Table of Contents

Because I Am Lucky	xi
New Poems
The Lilies of Landsford Canal	3	(2)
Gratitude	5	(1)
Where Snow Falls	6	(1)
Varieties of Angels	7	(1)
Someday the Wicker Chairs	8	(1)
After Gatsby	9	(1)
What You Meant	10	(1)
So Many Ways to Tell Ourselves the Truths	11	(1)
This Move into the Abstract	12	(1)
Listening	13	(1)
The Brain Enjoys Its Secret Life	14	(1)
A Day Like Any Other	15	(1)
The Body Wants to Sleep	16	(1)
Every Angel Is Terrible	17	(4)
water has no constant shape	21	(2)
Returning	23	(1)
At Duke University Medical Center	24	(2)
Where We Have Come	26	(3)
Not Swans	29	(1)
I'm Watching Her	30	(3)
From Trinity (1996)
The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene	33	(11)
From Letters Back: God Responds to Emily Dickinson	44	(6)
From In the Abiding Dark	50	(11)
From Everything Winged Must Be Dreaming (1993)
The Map of Imagined Geography	61	(2)
Rainy Morning in Puivert	63	(2)
How Seem Bedeviled Be	65	(3)
Etiam Peccata	68	(10)
Inventing My Parents	78	(1)
Happiness: The Forbidden Subject	79	(2)
Grace	81	(1)
October in the Aude	82	(2)
The Pal Lunch	84	(2)
The Difficult Life of Ideas	86	(1)
Poem to the Ideal Reader	87	(1)
Watching Myself Compose	88	(2)
What If	90	(1)
Jasmine	91	(3)
It Begins with a Presentiment	94	(1)
Containing the Light	95	(2)
Lasting	97	(4)
From To Find the Gold (1990)
The Gold She Finds: On the Life of Camille Claudel, Sculptor	101	(18)
Now Is the Silence of Sleeping Doves	119	(1)
Genet	120	(1)
After Thirty Octobers	121	(1)
New Physics	122	(1)
Paris Aubade	123	(1)
Laura	124	(1)
Au Premier Coup	125	(1)
To Enter	126	(3)
From The Beautiful Noon of No Shadow (1986)
In the Absence of Angels	129	(1)
The Dream of Birds	130	(1)
When There Is No Surface	131	(1)
The Sudden Approach of Trees	132	(2)
When Love Becomes	134	(1)
The Room	135	(4)
Miracles	139	(2)
Point of Disappearance	141	(2)
The Origami Heart	143	(1)
In Rilke's Paris	144	(1)
Traveling in the Old Country	145	(3)
Elegy	148	(3)
From the Beginning	151	(4)
From The Swimmer (1984)
Yesterday I Swam in the Rain	155	(1)
Some Notes on Courage	156	(1)
I Arrive in a Small Boat, Alone	157	(1)
Trying to Come to Terms	158	(2)
Anne, Dying	160	(1)
The Man Who Brought the Gypsy Moth	161	(2)
Darwin Discovers the Galapagos	163	(2)
Conquering the Night Jasmine	165	(1)
Man Arrested in Hacking Death Tells Police He Mistook Mother-in-Law for Raccoon	166	(1)
After Warnings from County Prosecutor Minister Agrees to Stop Using Electric Shocks to Teach Bible Students	167	(1)
After He Called Her a Witch	168	(1)
The Artist	169	(4)
Cleopatra	170	(1)
Nobleman with His Hand on His Chest	171	(1)
The Garden of Earthly Delights	172	(1)
Keeping the Truth Alive	173	(1)
The Crossing	174	(1)
Encounter at the Harbor	175	(1)
The Swimmer	176	(3)
From Northern Lights (1981)
Lesson	179	(1)
The Punishment	180	(1)
Little Women	181	(1)
Burials	182	(1)
Motherhood	183	(1)
All My Orifices Are Too Small	184	(1)
Again, Father, That Dream	185	(1)
Tale for a Daughter	186	(1)
The Child's Dream	187	(1)
Good Child	188	(1)
On Learning That Certain Peat Bogs Contain Perfectly Preserved Bodies	189	(2)
The Kiss	191	(1)
Jeanne d'Arc	192	(1)
The Widow	193	(2)
Margaret	195	(1)
Mary	196	(1)
Victoria	197	(2)
Minnie	199	(1)
Breasts	200	(1)
All I Ever Wanted Was a God	201	(1)
A Bargain at Any Price	202	(1)
Trying to Change the Subject	203	(1)
The Wisdom	204