{"product_id":"9780930829551","title":"Tea with Osiris","description":"\u003cp\u003e“A long-awaited departure from one of the best prose stylists of our day, \u003ci\u003eTea with Osiris\u003c\/i\u003e masterfully stirs together myth, trauma, and magic with fiery exuberance. A real treat for the brain cells.”—Diane Ackerman\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOsiris, the Egyptian god-king struck down by his brother Seth, sliced into pieces, and cast into the Nile only to be retrieved and reassembled by his sister Isis to become the god of the dead, serves Paul West as the informing spirit for this book of sonnets that observes his experience of a traumatic stroke and distills a multi-toned harmony:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eIf our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts, sez Osiris,\u003cbr\u003e Then our saddest songs are those that tell of sweetest thoughts.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first book of poems by West in many years, \u003ci\u003eTea with Osiris\u003c\/i\u003e will astonish readers with its formal control—the sonnet’s 14 lines corresponding to the sectioning of the god—its exuberant grotesqueries of hospital life, its reinvention of myth, its wit and humor, and, ultimately, its poetic celebration of a devastating visitation. For finally, in the world of Osiris, “Our nightmares are what sustain us.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eBack in the hospital a child of twelve is screaming, felled by loss: Where is she?\u003cbr\u003e They hold her close, then down.\u003cbr\u003e Osiris added her to his own.\u003cbr\u003e And the foam from her squandered lip will take its place among famed vapors from cuckoo to Lear, aimed at school children out on a trip,\u003cbr\u003e from Emily Brontë’s poisoned menses to Eva Braun’s best pensées.\u003cbr\u003e All grist for the Osiris mill,\u003cbr\u003e which says, whatever you will,\u003cbr\u003e You shall please me till I kill.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lumen Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47008499433712,"sku":"9780930829551","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780930829551_p0.jpg?v=1763857871","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780930829551","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}