{"product_id":"9780981843025","title":"The Necessity of Symbols","description":"What Body? \u003cp\u003eYou still believe the body is a temple for the spirit? Then read Thomas Ramey Watson and be delighted and appalled with him! The Necessity of Symbols plays again and again on the sacredness of the body-the body in love, the body in ecstasy of spirit and memory, even the body of Christ in communion. \u003cbr\u003e Like the forgotten troubadours, the poet gives a credible poetic ground that loving the beloved's body is close to loving God, or at least appreciating the universe. \"Knot Intrinsicate\" celebrates a woman's power:\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI am seventeen- \u003cbr\u003eyou, soft-voiced Guenevere. \u003cbr\u003eBut a Russian doll, \u003cbr\u003eyou held inside Mary, \u003cbr\u003ehawk of Catholicism, \u003cbr\u003eand Cleopatra, \u003cbr\u003esalad of the crescent world: \u003cbr\u003eeaten-undone-whole again. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a long poem that summarizes loss of job, loss of wife, loss of environment (Colorado), the poet holds psalms and songs in memory step by step of the way, shoring up the many threats to his spiritual life (\"A Book of Hours\"):\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy mind stayed on echoes: \u003cbr\u003ewhether one eats \u003cbr\u003eGod's words, \u003cbr\u003eor wakes within them- \u003cbr\u003edoes upheaval always follow?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the poem, \"Holy Communion,\" the poet does not scruple to equate the host with two lovers, who, as the poem progresses are separated, however, with the finite limits between them implicitly contrasted to God's infinite love: \"Broken from you, \/ I am set on a shelf.\" However, the lover remains an inspiration: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRising past the fragrance of ankles and thighs, \u003cbr\u003elingering on chest and neck, to pause on tiny moles like cinnamon sprinkled about your mouth \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethat explored with words, and tongue, \u003cbr\u003eand smile, then to those eyes, \u003cbr\u003ebrown as buttered crust on fresh-baked bread; \u003cbr\u003estill I hear your voice, yeasty, low. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese are fine points of a book with a broad sweep-poems about family, poems contrasting the poet's native Denver with the signal cultural meccas of Europe, poems most often of joy. The range is admirable and the poems intricate and dedicated to spiritual growth, with creation the touchstone where reality is tested and embodied. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlan Naslund, author of Silk Weather\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Barn Swallow Media","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50086909804784,"sku":"9780981843025","price":5.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780981843025","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}