Full Description
With each new collection, Philip Gross' poems extend their conversation between the metaphysical and the acutely physical. His sequences in The Thirteenth Angel scan from moment to moment like flickering needles, registering stress patterns in the world around us - ebbs and flows of weather or events, in our own bodies, in the city streets before and after the pandemic, or on the autoroutes of Europe with their undertow of human flight. If there are angels, they are nothing otherworldly, but formed by angles of incidence between real immediate things, sudden moments of clarity that may disturb, calm or exhilarate. The Thirteenth Angel is Philip Gross's 27th book of poetry, and his 12th from Bloodaxe, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2022.
Contents
11 Nocturne: The Information
22 Porcelain
24 The Follies
25 Smatter
38 A Q'ran of Ruzbihan
39 Black Glass Sonata
42 Scenes from the Lives of Stone Angels
44 Disintegration Loops
46 Moon, O
47 Sky Space
49 The Mishnah of the Moment
51 Psalm: You
52 Paul Klee: the Later Angels
55 Ash Plaint in the Key of O
57 Transient
58 A Near Distance
59 The Named Storm
60 Developing the Negatives
63 A Shadow on the House
65 Crack and Warp
69 If Today...
70 Springtime in Pandemia
77 Descants on Dante
81 Thirteen Angels
92 Silence Like Rain
