{"product_id":"9780809329663","title":"Strange Land","description":"\u003cp\u003eTodd Hearon’s haunting debut collection chronicles the twin paths of isolation and desire in the search for meaning and union with others. On his pilgrimage through the lost worlds of earth and the soul, the speaker encounters drought in both the literal and spiritual sense as he confronts desolate landscapes, from the brown remnants of ruined cities, to the depths of the human heart and man’s capacity for utter destruction. Yet even though he frequently encounters darkness, he never ceases to seek beauty. He is a man who wears many faces, from Adam, staring down a bleak future bereft of Paradise, to the doomed poet Shelley, drowned off the coast of Italy. He speaks as a man adrift in his own life, seeking an answer to his emptiness, an estranged traveler through memory and longing. Lyrical and intense, \u003ci\u003eStrange\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003e Land\u003c\/i\u003e is a quest for understanding and human connection.\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eStrange Land \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt goes without saying\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ea word:  the world under cover\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eof midnight snow, what we have known\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eof pageantry and lilac, leaf and song\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003esubsumed in starless silence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWaking at dawn into the tremulous blue\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eof the room, as in earth’s afterglow,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewe lie, lidless, listening, as crows\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ecall out the ear’s horizons.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat year is it?  Into what country were we born\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eand now must make our way?  Outside the pane\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethe stillness feels ancestral but the ghosts\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003enot yours, not mine.  My émigré,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewe are cut off.  An ocean to the east\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003echurns in chiaroscuro while unseen\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eranges to the south deflect our passage,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewhat passage might have been.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis country seems the passing of a dream\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eto a moonscape’s still immitigable white,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ea land’s amnesia where against the sky\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethree needling black birds fly\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eand slip like an ellipsis out of sight.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Southern Illinois University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47007741804784,"sku":"9780809329663","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780809329663_p0.jpg?v=1763727491","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780809329663","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}