{"product_id":"9781931337274","title":"Ladder of Hours","description":"\u003cp\u003e“Keith Althaus has the kind of straightforward voice that commands attention: He makes a series of seemingly calm statements and wham!, you’re hit by the fact that he’s telling the truth, the beautiful truth of what it’s like to be alive right now.”—Alan Dugan\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKeith Althaus published his first book ( \u003ci\u003eRival Heavens\u003c\/i\u003e , Provincetown Arts Press) in 1993 and has been working in relative obscurity ever since. \u003ci\u003eLadder of Hours \u003c\/i\u003e gathers poems written over four decades, a selection that teaches us how insight into everyday life can transform the world. Composed in language that is spare, almost skeletal, yet lacking nothing, \u003ci\u003eLadder of Hours \u003c\/i\u003e investigates the subtleties of moments we might otherwise overlook. Althaus is interested in everything, from the label on a whiskey bottle to the distance between emotion and idea. His poems explode “ordinary” moments of perception, revealing unexpected meaning and resonance, and they do so in a way that seems strangely without ego, bent entirely on extracting and capturing the essence of his discoveries. \u003ci\u003eLadder of Hours \u003c\/i\u003e takes us into numinous territory we didn’t know was there.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003eLullaby\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe painful series of operation that culminate in death:\u003cbr\u003e becoming forty, eighty,\u003cbr\u003e neither one. Dying young or old, awake or drugged,\u003cbr\u003e or pleasantly unaware in sleep as they say Auden wanted to and did, with just the slightest sensation,\u003cbr\u003e like a sleeping baby handed from one pair of arms into another.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cb\u003eKeith Althaus \u003c\/b\u003e has published poems in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e , \u003ci\u003eThe American Poetry Review\u003c\/i\u003e , \u003ci\u003ePoetry\u003c\/i\u003e , and numerous other magazines. He has worked at many jobs, including carpentry, tree planting, loft renovation, and clerical work, and now runs a gallery with his wife, the artist Susan Baker. They live in North Truro, Massachusetts.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Copper Canyon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47057993335024,"sku":"9781931337274","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781931337274_p0.jpg?v=1763638279","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781931337274","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}