{"product_id":"9781890650582","title":"Desolation: Souvenir","description":"\u003cp\u003eFiercely elegiac, the title poem of Paul Hoover’s desolation : souvenir began as a “filling in” of the blank spaces in A Tomb for Anatole, Paul Auster’s translation of Mallarmé’s grief-stricken notes for a poem that he never completed on the death of his ten-year-old son. However, Hoover’s writing soon turned to his own consideration of life, death, the breaking of family relations, and loss of love as experienced by all of us: “when death plays \/ with a child \/ it goes out nimble \/ comes back cold \/ life that traitor \/ aboard a razor boat.” Written in three terse stanzas, each of the poem’s 50 pages offers a phrase that becomes the title of its opposite number at the other end of the manuscript. The result is a haunting echoic effect that becomes especially rich as the phrases “cross” at the middle of the sequence. At times, the poem mourns the loss of the earth itself: “what will be enough \/ when the earth \/ contains no one \/ will the harvest still be full” and “no bees in the hive, no hive \/ sound returns to its bell.” Inspired by his reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, the companion poem, “The Windows (The Actual Acts),” consists of a series of philosophical propositions in everyday language: “An object is the actual awaiting further action. \/ It can wait a long time. \/ Time is fresh in objects even when they decay. \/ You can’t give one example of time getting old.” Another series of thoughts begins: “Have you every gazed from a window to see if everything’s still there? \/ And see your own face in the glass, superimposed on the view? \/ Consciousness rests among its objects. \/ Which makes the objects restless.” Long established as a poet of wit and intelligence, Paul Hoover now establishes himself as an important voice of deep emotional resonance and far ranging vision.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Omnidawn Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47043690529008,"sku":"9781890650582","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781890650582_p0.jpg?v=1763607989","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781890650582","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}