| Description |
viii, 116 pages ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Let them not say -- The bowl -- I wanted to be surprised -- Vest -- An archaeology -- Fecit -- Day beginning with seeing the International Space Station and a full moon over the Gulf of Mexico and all its invisible fishes -- As if hearing heavy furniture moved on the floor above us -- Description -- Ants' nest -- A bucket forgets its water -- Questionnaire -- You to go sleep in one room and wake in another -- Chance darkened me -- Some questions -- Today, another universe -- The orphan beauty of fold not made blindfold -- Now a darkness is coming -- Words -- Homs -- She breathes in the scent -- A folding screen -- Practice -- Cataclysm -- Paint -- Heels -- Cold, clear -- Capital: an assay -- Falcon -- Spell to be said against hatred -- Advice to myself -- Notebook -- In Ulvik -- O snail -- Branch -- Without night-shoes -- The bird net -- Corals, Coho, coelenterates -- To my fifties -- Brocade -- Interruption: an assay -- My doubt -- My contentment -- My hunger -- My longing -- My dignity -- My glasses -- My wonder -- My silence -- A ream of paper -- Lure -- A moment knows itself penultimate -- Bluefish -- Almond, rabbit -- The paw-paw -- Musa paradisiaca -- It was as if a ladder -- Like others -- Husband -- Wild turkeys -- Nine pebbles -- Without blinking -- Like that other-hand music -- Retrospective -- Library book with many precisely turned-down corners -- Now even more -- Haiku: monadnock -- A strategy -- Sixth extinction -- Obstacle -- They have decided -- Things seem strong -- Dog tag -- Biophilia -- Amor fati -- Snow -- Kitchen -- Harness --- Rust flakes on wind -- Pelt -- Wood. Salt. Tin -- I said -- Ledger -- In a former coal mine in Silesia -- Engraving: world-tree with an empty beehive on one branch -- (No wind, no rain) -- On the fifth day -- Page -- My confession -- Ghazal for the end of time -- Mountainal -- My debt. |
| Summary |
Ledger's pages hold the most important and masterly work yet by Jane Hirshfield, one of our most celebrated contemporary poets. From the already much-quoted opening lines of despair and defiance ("Let them not say: we did not see it. / We saw"), Hirshfield's poems inscribe a registry, both personal and communal, of our present-day predicaments. They call us to deepened dimensions of thought, feeling, and action. They summon our responsibility to sustain one another and the earth while pondering, acutely and tenderly, the crises of refugees, justice, and climate. They consider "the minimum mass for a whale, for a language, an ice cap," recognize the intimacies of connection, and meditate upon doubt and contentment, a library book with previously dog-eared corners, the hunger for surprise, and the debt we owe this world's continuing beauty. Hirshfield's signature alloy of fact and imagination, clarity and mystery, inquiry, observation, and embodied emotion has created a book of indispensable poems, tuned toward issues of consequence to all who share this world's current and future fate. |
| Subject |
American poetry -- 21st century.
|
| Genre |
Poetry.
|
| ISBN |
9780525657804 (hardcover) |
|
0525657800 (hardcover) |
|
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