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Kitchen Hymns

AUTHOR . Tuama, Pdraig
PUBLISHER Copper Canyon Press (01/28/2025)
PRODUCT TYPE Paperback (Paperback)

Description


Written by the engaging host of the popular show, Poetry Unbound, the poems of Kitchen Hymns are finely honed melodies of survival--shaped with both humor and anger, force and conviction.

Pádraig Ó Tuama's Kitchen Hymns opens with a question: "Do You Believe in God?" -- but the bee, "gone extinct," cannot answer, and the grass calls believe "a poor verb." This collection trades belief for language, and philosophy is grounded in form and narrative. Kitchen Hymns is structured like a ghost mass, where even if God is a "favorite emptiness," longing still has things to say: Jesus and Persephone meet at Hell's exit and discuss survival; someone believes more in birds than belief; hares carry messages from the overworld to the underworld. A study in lyric address, Kitchen Hymns speaks to a shifting "you" an unknown you; the strange you; a lover, a hated other; the you of erotic desire; the you of creation and destruction. Large themes are informed by and contained in a poetics of observation, humor, trauma, dialogics, lament, rage and praise. Delivered in finely honed melodies, shaped with force and conviction, Kitchen Hymns "reckon[s] with the empty," and becomes "busy with a body / not a question."
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Product Format
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9781556597107
ISBN-10: 155659710X
Binding: Paperback or Softback (Trade Paperback (Us))
Content Language: English
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Page Count: 104
Carton Quantity: 76
Product Dimensions: 7.00 x 0.30 x 9.00 inches
Weight: 0.44 pound(s)
Feature Codes: Bibliography, Price on Product
Country of Origin: US
Subject Information
BISAC Categories
Poetry | Subjects & Themes - Religious
Poetry | American - General
Poetry | European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Dewey Decimal: 821.92
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024019448
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Written by the engaging host of the popular show, Poetry Unbound, the poems of Kitchen Hymns are finely honed melodies of survival--shaped with both humor and anger, force and conviction.

Pádraig Ó Tuama's Kitchen Hymns opens with a question: "Do You Believe in God?" -- but the bee, "gone extinct," cannot answer, and the grass calls believe "a poor verb." This collection trades belief for language, and philosophy is grounded in form and narrative. Kitchen Hymns is structured like a ghost mass, where even if God is a "favorite emptiness," longing still has things to say: Jesus and Persephone meet at Hell's exit and discuss survival; someone believes more in birds than belief; hares carry messages from the overworld to the underworld. A study in lyric address, Kitchen Hymns speaks to a shifting "you" an unknown you; the strange you; a lover, a hated other; the you of erotic desire; the you of creation and destruction. Large themes are informed by and contained in a poetics of observation, humor, trauma, dialogics, lament, rage and praise. Delivered in finely honed melodies, shaped with force and conviction, Kitchen Hymns "reckon[s] with the empty," and becomes "busy with a body / not a question."
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List Price $17.00
Your Price  $16.83
Paperback