{"product_id":"9780226740973","title":"Blessings for the Hands","description":"From \u003ci\u003eThe Sky Inside the Shaking Tree\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cu\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What you feel\u003cbr\u003e reveals you.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Watch\u003cbr\u003e for the sustenance\u003cbr\u003e inclined to a source,\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e enamored of singularity,\u003cbr\u003e quickly here and quickly\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e gone, shadow from which\u003cbr\u003e the body's courage comes.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Fireflies\u003cbr\u003e apparently stumbling.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e I slapped one on my leg.\u003cbr\u003e Its blood glowed.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eBlessings for the Hands\u003c\/i\u003e follows various speakers—often disabled speakers, who never once figure themselves as objects of complaint or self-pity—through the haunted dreamscape of “normalcy.” Indeed, dreams are continuous presences in this unusually subtle and elegant debut collection that juxtaposes physical circumstances with the vast interior life of the imagination. The subjects of \u003ci\u003eBlessings for the Hands\u003c\/i\u003e are real and imagined confrontations—and reconciliations—between family members, friends, strangers, and animals. Matthew Schwartz’s quasi-autobiographical verse complicates and clarifies the emotions waiting just underneath the patterns and expectations of the speakers’ daylight lives, where anger, joy, corporeality, and mortality all seem to collide. For Schwartz, poetry is a sleight of hand that keeps the reader guessing through nearly imperceptible shifts between present vision and absent reality. \u003ci\u003eBlessings for the Hands\u003c\/i\u003e is a lyric reckoning of the tension between the life we are given and the life we are determined to lead.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eBlessings for the Hands\u003c\/i\u003e is emotionally strong and imaginatively wild, distinctive, deeply moving, without an ort of self-pity, and pervaded by ‘compassion down to your fingertips’ (which Chekhov said is ‘the only method’ both to write and to live). This angle of vision is sharp enough to unify much disparate material. The poems are clear and musical and consequently a pleasure to read and reread despite their gravity. I think this may be lasting work.”—Michael Ryan    ","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47080276689136,"sku":"9780226740973","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780226740973_p0.jpg?v=1763674782","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780226740973","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}