Full Description
Theophobia is the latest volume in Bruce Beasley's ongoing spiritual meditation which forms a kind of postmodern devotional poetry in a reinvention of the tradition of John Donne, George Herbert, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot. Theophobia is structured around a series of poems called "Pilgrim's Deviations" and forms a deviant and deviating pilgrimage through science, history, politics, and popular culture. Beasley seeks the Biblical Kingdom of God among Dolly the cloned sheep, the wonders and horrors of extremophilic creatures living in astonishing intensities of temperature, robotic phone operators, and Wikipedia's explanation of the mysteries of the Holy Spirit. Bruce Beasley is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems (University of Washington Press, 2007). He has won fellowships from the NEA and the Artist Trust of Washington and three Pushcart Prizes. Finalist for The Washington State Book Award One of Poetry Northwest's Notable Books of 2014
Contents
ONE
Pilgrim's Deviations 1 1
Having Read the Holy Spirit's Wikipedia 2
Year's End Paradoxography 6
TWO
Pilgrim's Deviations 2 11
All Saints 12
The Kingdom of God Is Not Usher'd in
with Pomp and Exclamations 13
Sunrise Insomnia Service 15
Stray Apostrophes 17
Reading the Not-Written 20
THREE
Pilgrim's Deviations 3 22
Valedictions 23
Theme and Invariants 27
The Scale by which the Mapped Concerns
the Map 29
FOUR
Pilgrim's Deviations 4 31
Genomic Vanitas:
Vanitas 32
Vocation 33
Void Domicils 34
Mother Tongue 35
Like Begets Unlike 36
Nothing to Obstruct 37
Memento Vivi 38
Canticle of the Creatures 39
Reading about Retrotransposons
in Amish Country, in the Fall 41
FIVE
Pilgrim's Deviations 5 43
May I Tell You, Mr. President, About the
Sacred Chickens 44
Dysinaugural 47
SIX
Pilgrim's Deviations 6 52
Self-Portrait in Ink 53
"Behold, I Am Against the Prophets," Saith
The Lord, "Who with Sweet Tongues
Say, `the Lord Saith'" 54
The Parable of the Mustard Seed 56
Dedication 58
Like Unto a Merchant Man Seeking Goodly
Pearls 59
As in a Dim Scriptorium 62
Extremophilic Magnificat 64
SEVEN
Pilgrim's Deviations 7 69
Six Notes toward the End 70
To Revoke All Wills and Codicils Heretofore
Made by Me 72
NOTES As if the exegesis could ever cease 85
