Talking Dirty to the Gods (Paperback)

A daredevil poetic achievement nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award

. . . A god isn't worth
A drop of water in the hell of his good

Imagination, if we can't curse
Sunsets & threaten to forsake him
In his storehouse of belladonna,
Tiger hornets, & snakebites.
--from "Meditations in a Swine Yard"

No turn in any life cycle is taboo as Yusef Komunyakaa examines the primal rituals shared by insects, animals, human beings, and deities in Talking Dirty to the Gods. From "Hearsay" to "Heresy," these 132 poems, each consisting of four quatrains, are framed by innuendo and lively satire. Komunyakaa looks to nature and configures his own paradigm, in which an event as commonplace as the jewel wasp laying an egg in a cockroach becomes every bit as grand as Zeus's infidelity. The formally rigorous collection is itself a design for a systematic cosmos, a world compressed but abundant in surprise and delight.

General

Imprint:	Pan Macmillan
Country of origin:	South Africa
Release date:	December 2001
First published:	September 2001
Authors:	Yusef Komunyakaa
Dimensions:	203 x 146 x 11mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	144
ISBN-13:	978-0-374-52793-8
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Poetry texts & anthologies > General
LSN:	0-374-52793-8
Barcode:	9780374527938

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