Full Description
Playful love poems to kids, coral reefs, and crows_x000D_
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Winner of the 2024 Cardinal Poetry Prize_x000D_
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Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem is the inaugural winner of the Cardinal Poetry Prize, selected by renowned poet Robert Pinsky. In free verse and invented poetic forms, Rachel Trousdale explores how the interplay between the mind and body illuminates our most important relationships, whether with other humans, wild spaces, or works of art. Inhabited by crows, yetis, coral reefs, and aliens, these poems playfully examine the intensity and conflict of romantic love; the entropic joys of parenthood; illness and grief; and the ways our physical loves and intangible losses teach us responsibility to the world around us. _x000D_
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[Sample Poem]_x000D_
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Love Poem With Dereliction of Duty_x000D_
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It's true—I like you more than I like_x000D_
the Marquis de Sade; God that_x000D_
mid-April afternoon in 1995,_x000D_
when I said, "let's take a walk"_x000D_
and you said "sure" and we circled_x000D_
the New Haven Green saying_x000D_
who the hell knows what_x000D_
because if we had seen_x000D_
all this falling in love stuff coming, we_x000D_
would have paid more attention;_x000D_
I just know it took two hours,_x000D_
past the churches and the porn shop_x000D_
and over to the cemetery with all_x000D_
those skull-topped slabs leaning_x000D_
memorially against the brownstone wall;_x000D_
round and round we went like marbles_x000D_
dodging the traps in a game_x000D_
of labyrinth; and finally back_x000D_
to campus through that big stone gate_x000D_
which we entered just as the prof_x000D_
of the philosophy class I was skipping_x000D_
came out and I said oh the pain_x000D_
the pain I can't take it any more_x000D_
and doubled up laughing
Contents
I. Introduction
Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem
The Reef
Optics Lab
Variations on a Theme by Oscar Wilde
How to Survive a Wildfire
II. First Body Paragraph
Love Poem With Dereliction of Duty
Your Airplane
Invisible Mice
Furnishing
Self Portrait as Noble Pen Shell
I Swear This Is Not Intended as a Back-Handed Compliment
Lost in the Woods
Love Poem With Boojum
Love Poem With Naratriptan
Units of Measure
III. Second Body Paragraph
Bubble
Entropy
Avalanche Conditions
For a Child Drowned Off Lesbos
Our Colt
Syllabus
Collection
How to Face Your Own Mortality and That of Your Loved Ones
Parental Authority is a Myth Like Any Other Myth
Hands
IV. Third Body Paragraph
A Long List of Small Mercies
Slope
Carboniferous
The Alien Observer Gets Worried
Hill Country
Call When You Get There
The Migraine
Dear Ilsabil,
Night Shift, Summer, 1994
The Pyramid
V. Conclusion
Narrative of the Tribal Bard
Steeple
The Second Baby Explains the Unthinkable
Old Joke
Packing List
