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04/2005. xv, 94 pages.
0896725448
978-0-89672-544-7
$14.95 paper
Walt McDonald First-Book Series in Poetry
Coming soon: online ordering! In the meantime, please call 800.832.4042 or 806.742.2982 to order.
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Strange Pietà By Gregory Fraser
Introduction by Robert A. Fink
The twelfth volume of poems in the Walt McDonald First-Book Series, Gregory Fraser's
Strange Pietà is a compelling exploration of illness and family life, memory and desire, friendship and loss. A major focus of the collection is the poet's relationship to his brother Jonathan, who was born with spina bifida, a disease that rendered him both physically and mentally disabled. In rich and often wrenching detail, Fraser describes the emotional turmoil, familiar dysfunction, and complex social responses arising from the birth of a handicapped child.
The book examines cultural standards of normalcy, and uncovers those aspects of the self and others that are often considered freakish, unnatural, or "monstrous." What emerges is a poetry of poignancy and intellectual rigor, of private discoveries and larger philosophical questions about faith, beauty, and the redemptive power of art.
The various other poems in the volume frequently take up disturbing subjects from domestic abuse to violent global conflict, from the death of a parent to the breakup of a close friend's marriage. By turns urgent, tender, skeptical, and wry, Fraser's work displays a complexity of thought with a clarity of language and imagery.
A two-time finalist for the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets,
Strange Pietà is, according to Robert Phillips, "an important debut." Phillips also writes, "This book, from beginning to end, shows the hand of one who has mastered his craft and lived long enough to have something to say." James Olney of
The Southern Review describes Strange Pietà as "a resounding triumph of strictly ordered emotion."
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 Pietà
Bluegills
The end of the summer Uncle Puding died
you hung a day's worth from the aspen nail
watched them gulp the dimming air,
flap off bark, rattle the stringer chain.
You let dorsals slowly unfan, tails stiffen
and curl, and midges dart the gills, which gaped
and shut like mouths in some silent quarrel
with what was coming on, scentless,
quiet as time. You wanted to feel afraid
(black water lapping the algaed bank)
and gazed into the gilltips, glowing past dusk,
blue as dragonflies, blue as butane flame,
yet sensed no heat when you steadied
a finger near. And when you stretched
to stroke the gills wrong, backwards
for a nick, no blood came, no sweat
in cool sleeves down your face
or sudden screak of pain--only wind
dwelling in the reeds, and a heron,
far off, slicing open water for a meal.
Why didn't you think then to slip
the whole catch back, into the lilies,
under the dock? Why did you pause
until jaws and eyes locked wide for good,
looking as though the end were a surprise?
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