{"product_id":"9780226492728","title":"Draft of a Letter","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom \u003ci\u003eSecond Draft\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhat other people learn\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFrom birth,\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBetrayal,\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eI learned late.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMy soul perched\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOn an olive branch\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCombing itself,\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWaving its plumes.  I said\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBeing mortal,\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eI aspire to\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMortal things.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eI need you,\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSaid my soul,\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIf you’re telling the truth.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eDraft of a Letter\u003c\/i\u003e is a book about belief—not belief in the unknowable but belief in what seems bewilderingly plain. Pondering the bodies we inhabit, the words we speak, these poems discover infinitude in the most familiar places. The revelation is disorienting and, as a result, these poems talk to themselves, revise themselves, fashioning a dialogue between self and soul that opens outward to include other voices, lovers, children, angels, and ghosts. For James Longenbach, great distance makes the messages we send sweeter. To be divided from ourselves is never to be alone. “If the kingdom is in the sky,” says the body to the soul, “Birds will get there before you.” “In time,” says the awakening soul, “I liked my second \/ Body better \/ Than the first.” To live, these poems insist, is to arise every day to the strange magnificence of the people and places we thought we knew best. \u003ci\u003eDraft of a Letter\u003c\/i\u003e is an unsettled and radiant paradiso, imagined in the death-shadowed, birth-haunted middle of a long life.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eFleet\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eRiver\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e“A sensibility this cogent, this subtle and austere is rare; even rarer is its proof that poetry still flows through all things and transforms all things in the process.”—Carol Muske-Dukes, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47120291791088,"sku":"9780226492728","price":17.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780226492728_p0.jpg?v=1763674405","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780226492728","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}