{"id":1979,"date":"2017-02-06T19:59:01","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T19:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/product\/import-placeholder-for-157\/"},"modified":"2023-05-23T12:21:53","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T16:21:53","slug":"the-book-of-endings","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/product\/the-book-of-endings\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Endings"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The poems in\u00a0The Book of Endings\u00a0<\/i>try to make sense of, or at least come to some kind of reckoning with absence\u2014the death of the author’s mother, the absence of the beloved, the absence of an accountable god, cicadas, the dead stars arriving, the dead moon aglow in the night sky.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

It\u2019s often snowing in these inconsolable poems of beautiful refusal\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009refusal to accept death, refusal to be silent in the face of ever-accumulating loss. Almost always, the poems unfurl using a line that feels continuous, like a sustained exhalation, making each poem an emotional river. While the poems have delicacy of image, they are relentless in their momentum. The gradual erosion and dispersal of our physical selves, our decomposition into the elements, these perpetual disappearances mortality insists on, are sung of here, along with the fact that spiritually and scientifically, all this leave-taking is also a form of fecundity. These are incantatory and hypnotic poems.<\/p>\n

\u2014Amy Gerstler<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the alchemy of these darkly fluid poems, grief and solace meet. There is also the clash between isolation and the profound solitude encountered in the natural world. The result is an ongoing prayer for consolation, even if such prayer flies into the heavens without answer. Yet these predicaments leave us this absorbing book, an island in the sea of the human spirit, and a claim for the transcendent value of art.<\/p>\n

\u2014Maurice Manning<\/strong><\/p>\n

The poems in Leslie Harrison\u2019s\u00a0The Book of Endings\u00a0<\/em>test for themselves Wallace Stevens\u2019 assertion, \u201cThere is no wing like meaning.\u201d Each poem takes up the challenge \u201cto attempt meaning\u201d in a world marked by loss, \u201cto unfold the dead hawk\u2019s wing and ask it about flight.\u201d The reader first feels the musical delicacy of these lines\u2014and then their ferocity. Part prayer, part protest, these poems both wish for and\u2014necessarily\u2014resist the desire to mend the world.<\/p>\n

\u2014Jennifer Clarvoe<\/strong><\/p>\n

About the author<\/h3>\n
\n

Leslie Harrison\u00a0<\/b>is the author of\u00a0The Book of Endings\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Displacement.\u00a0<\/i>She was born in Germany and raised mostly in New Hampshire. She holds graduate degrees from The Johns Hopkins University and The University of California, Irvine. Her poems have appeared in journals including\u00a0Poetry, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, FIELD, Subtropics, Pleiades, Orion\u00a0<\/i>and elsewhere.<\/b> She teaches at Towson University.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reviews and interviews<\/h3>\n

\u201cWhen You Read These Poems, They\u2019re Yours\u201d<\/a>: An Interview With Leslie Harrison in Ploughshares<\/em><\/p>\n

“Leslie Harrison Turns the Silence of Sadness into Poetry,”<\/a> Ideastream\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Poetry Spotlight: Contributor Leslie Harrison<\/a>, Memorious<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leslie Harrison<\/h3>\n

Pages: 88; Size: 6 x 9
\nSeries: Akron Series in Poetry<\/p>\n

Editor’s Choice<\/em><\/p>\n

2017 National Book Award Finalist, Poetry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2543,"template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[83887],"product_tag":[211],"class_list":{"0":"post-1979","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-akron-series-in-poetry","7":"product_tag-poetry","9":"first","10":"instock","11":"shipping-taxable","12":"product-type-simple"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/1979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=1979"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=1979"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=1979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}