Full Description
When the Gnostic Gospels collide with new age spiritualism, the Oxford Happiness Test, and treatises on Buddhist practice, we know we're in the territory of a Bruce Beasley collection. Alternately devout and heretical, Beasley—known for his intense and continuing soul-quest through previous award-winning books—interrogates the absurdities, psychic violence, and spiritual condition of twenty-first century America with despair, philosophic intelligence, and piercing humor.
Bruce Beasley is the author of eight collections of poetry, including Theophobia (BOA, 2012). The winner of numerous literary awards and fellowships, he lives in Bellingham, WA, where he is a professor of English at Western Washington University.
Contents
The Parts
Torn-to-Pieces-Hood
Part I Thou Must Leave
Report to the Provost on the Progress of My Leave 1
Me Meaneth 4
Reading Jesus Again, with a New Prescription 9
Part II Disorientation Psalm
Tohu Bohu 13
Looking Down the Cliff, with Schopenhauer, on Black Friday 16
The Last Good 19
"I Don't Like My Soul Parts" 21
Reading The Purpose Driven Life, with Schopenhauer 22
Part III Hymeneal
Nuptial Song 26
On Marriage 29
Antithalamion 30
What Do You Think the Poet Is Trying to Say? 33
The Name of the Island Was Marriage 35
Offspring Insprung 39
Part IV The Sixth Dust
Revised Catechism 43
Cleft for Me Let Me Hide Myself from Thee 45
Such and Such and Such and Such 47
Part V The Mass of the Ordinary
Kyrie 51
Embolism 54
Sanctus 57
Credo 58
Fraction Rite 60
Agnus Dei 63
Benedictus 65
Gloria 68
NONORDINARY TO THE POEMS 70
