Counter-Amores (Phoenix Poets)

ISBN: 0226109283

Author: Clarvoe, Jennifer

Condition: New

Jennifer Clarvoes second book, Counter-Amores, wrestles with and against love. The poems in the title series talk back to Ovids Amores, and, in talking back, take charge, take delight, and take revenge. They suggest that we discover what we love by fighting, by bringing our angry, hungry, imperfect selves into the battle. Like a man who shouts for the echo back from a cliff, or the scientist who teaches her parrot to say, I love you, or the philosopher who wonders what it is like to be a bat, or Temple Grandins lucid imaginings of the last moments of cattle destined for slaughter, the speakers in these poems seek to find themselves in relation to an ever-widening circle of unknowable others. Yearning for the sweet cool hum of fridge and fluorescent that sang home, were as likely to find fifty-seven clicks and flickering channels pitched to the galaxy. Song itself becomes a site for gorgeous struggle, just as bella means both beautiful and wars.