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This vibrant collection of poems explores the intricate connections between body and soul, between the heart and the world that steadily calls to it. In language that frequently transgresses and sometimes transcends the standards of diction and syntax, Sidney Wade celebrates the language’s pleasures and its essential relation to the sensual and spiritual dimensions of an introspective and generally genial sensibility. Handling some of the most venerable of poetic subjects in the freshest of lyric and colloquial expression, Celestial Bodies is a festival of sense and sound, not unmarked by the sadness that underlies and sometimes measures the passages of any honestly examined life.
I want to raise some notes from the under-mind
and fan the rumors at bed-time
the beautiful word-fall that churns up from the ripe center
I want I want I want
rises from the fire diaphragm
laps on the shores of the throat and rides out on the tongue
tęte et amour,
immensity and pleasure-dew
are better than a bank full of pretty money
there’s enough beauty in this world to choke a god
Selection from “Mouth-River” published in Celestial Bodies by Sidney Wade. Copyright © 2002 by Sidney Wade. All rights reserved.
Sidney Wade is also the author of Green, From Istanbul, and Empty Sleeves. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, Southern Review, and other publications. An associate professor of English at the University of Florida, she lives in Gainesville.
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