Bøger af Amy Lemmon

Amy Lemmon s stunning and heart-wrenching debut, Saint Nobody, offers us a profound meditation on the body, on the tribulations and the hard-found joys of incarnation. Lemmon does not shy away from a world where vestigial angel-parts ache to emerge and where there doesn t appear to be a speck of God. This piercing meditation takes the problem of the body, and the problem of the body in a world that often seems God-less, head-on, without flinching, and yet delivers us truths and beauty we would never have imagined. Lemmon knows that we can t count on the intercession of an absent saint, and she refuses easy solace. Instead, she probes deeply into the pain, into the conflicting emotions of childbirth, into the birth of a child with Down Syndrome which is probably the most extraordinary poem written on that subject to understand the life of our body here, the body in which pain is sharpest where my wings would be. This is a world of urine samples, errant chromosomes, lost kisses, first bleedings, chaotic cells, and scars, where the blood seems ours alone, and where the words are the only bread we have that may deliver us. In the bread of her words, Lemmon has given us a profound sacrament."

With lyricism and grace, Amy Lemmon gives us a worldview to live by. The all-too-familiar "wear of sorrow's rub" is presented alongside the world's miracles, including the author's two children. Through the disintegration of her marriage and the tragic death of her children's father, she tells us, "We can believe something is always growing." With a mix of wonder and trepidation, Lemmon chronicles the blossoming of a son and daughter, each exceptional in their own way, into ever more complex beings under her care. She names other miracles as well: "This light,/wan blue sky and unforgiving sun,/the sound of crushing asphalt beneath/strong metal, the grinding of gears." The broken world is made whole by the stately yet playful lines of these masterful poems, whether wrought in received forms like sonnet, sestina, and villanelle, invented/indented forms, riffs on famous forbears, or musically crafted free verse. Fearlessly bridging the gap between tradition and artistic innovation, the author moves us forward with her into the unknown, to entertain new relationships with herself, her children, and the world.