{"product_id":"9780226647937","title":"Chameleon Hours","description":"  From \u003ci\u003eWays of Going\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cu\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/u\u003efor Steve \u003cbr\u003e Will it be like paragliding\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e gossamer takeoff, seedlike drifting down\u003cbr\u003e into a sunlit, unexpected grove?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Or ski-jumping—headlong soaring,\u003cbr\u003e ski-tips piercing clouds,\u003cbr\u003e crystal revelations astonishing my goggles?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e . . . . Skittery flicker of a glare-weary lizard\u003cbr\u003e startled into the sheltering wings of a leaf,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e rusting freighter with a brimming hold\u003cbr\u003e shimmering onto a crimson edge. . . .\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Sad rower pushed from shore,\u003cbr\u003e I'll disappear like circles summoned\u003cbr\u003e by an oar's dip.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e However I burn through to the next atmosphere,\u003cbr\u003e let your dear face be the last thing I see.   \u003cbr\u003e   Whether writing poems about North American life and landscape; or love poems; or elegies for family and friends; or poems on serious, debilitating illness and the transformations it can effect—Elise Partridge offers in \u003ci\u003eChameleon Hours\u003c\/i\u003e words forged by suffering and courage. Full of wit and empathy, Partridge’s poems draw inspiration from sources as whimsical as tortoises and pontoons, as poignant as a homeless woman taking shelter inside a post office on a winter night, and as deeply personal as her own cancer diagnosis at a young age. \u003ci\u003eChameleon Hours\u003c\/i\u003e is a book about the rewards of being reminded of one’s own mortality and the lyric expression of life in all its intensity.    “In their ample, embracing, nuanced appetite for sensory experience, [Partridge’s] poems achieve an ardent, compassionate and unsentimental vision.”—Robert Pinsky, \u003ci\u003eWashington\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003ePost\u003c\/i\u003e    “Partridge’s impressive poems pursue a careful thinker’s yearning for abandon, a loyal friend and partner’s wish for change. Attentive to fact, to what she sees and knows, Partridge nonetheless makes space for what is wild, outside and within us—for the fears and the blanks of chemotherapy, for sharp variations within (and without) frames of metre and rhyme, and for the welcome consistencies of married love. She has learned detail-work, and patience, from Elizabeth Bishop, but she has made other virtues her own: riffs on familiar phrases open startling vistas and even her love poems get attractively practical. Hers is a welcome invitation: let’s listen in.”—Stephen Burt    “Reading \u003ci\u003eChameleon Hours\u003c\/i\u003e, I find myself marveling at the luck of each heron, mosquito, field of Queen Anne’s Lace, each person, place, thing or circumstance in this beautiful book, to have Elise Partridge’s exquisite and precise attention. And how lucky we are to get to listen in as she offers each of them her flawless ear; the book is full of understated sonic gems like ‘a kickball straight into pink lilac.’ In ‘Chemo Side Effects: Memory,’ after describing ‘groping in the thicket’ for ‘the word I want . . . scrabbling like a squirrel on the oak’s far side,’ she tells us ‘I could always pull the gift \/ from the lucky-dip barrel; scoop the right jewel \/ from my dragon’s trove. . . .’ We of course already know this. It’s evident in every one of these poems.”—Jacqueline Osherow    \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Praise for \u003ci\u003eFielder’s Choice\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Partridge is a technical wizard for whom thinking and feeling are not separate activities. She is a hawk-like observer of the particular . . . many times ascending to pitch-perfect verse.”—Ken Babstock, \u003ci\u003eGlobe and Mail\u003c\/i\u003e (Canada)            ","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47120205349104,"sku":"9780226647937","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780226647937_p0.jpg?v=1763675595","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780226647937","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}