Philip Metres’s newest collection of poetry speaks as eloquently as ever against empire—but he grounds the writing in this book in his own family’s story and history.
“There are no accidents. / Anaximander says all things in heaven and earth / as they are born and perish / pay each other reckoning and recompense / for trespass into being.”
“The nannies, off to their daily grind, scramble / into the back of the Volvo and are carted off / to some neighbor’s patch of scotch broom / and blackberries.”
"One couldn’t know how long it would go on // lashing desultorily at the portholes— / how the waters would gather / til they lifted the keel clear off its supports"
This, to save the Republic, / this for the glory of the state, they, the inheritors of, / for them, a great tradition, in their murderous insistences / they, the United States, conduct a killing spree
On this episode, Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama testifies to the peace and spiritual freedom he found by laying down “the burden of belief.”
Contrary to what is typically asked of him, the just man does not need imagination but attention. Poetry, too, requires a kind of pure, focused attention.
