This collection of fifty-two poems from the author of Angel Fire and Anonymous Sins explores the annihilation of the time-bound ego, a liberating, sometimes terrifying experience for all who live within the "fabulous beast" of history and nature. The poems explore the shifting, elusive point at which the inwardness of individual experience touches upon the larger consciousness of a species or an era, forming a connection with a "self" that goes beyond subjectivity. The poems are grouped into four parts: "Broken Connections," "Forbidden Testimonies," "The Child-Martyr" and "A Posthumous Sketch," are prose poems which, though technically different from the others, are concerned with the same theme-the relationship between the individual and a larger, all-inclusive whole. Neither fatalistic nor rebellious, the poems convey the idea that as long as we live in time we must struggle, and that is this struggle that determines our humanity.
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Are you safe there? Can you hear me?Across the snow-maddened mileswe shout questions and answers.- Broken Connections
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(@lsupress, 1 January 1975, paperback, 100 pages, bought from @AmazonUK)
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I read The Fabulous Beasts more recently so remember it better. It's my favourite of JCO's earlier books of poetry. There's something I really love about the poems in this collection, even the longer prose poems that are more like mini vignettes. The poems in this collection are quite bold and dark, unsettling at times and a little mesmerizing. I especially enjoyed A Posthumous Sketch, Forbidden Testimony, In The Case Of Accidental Death and Waiting. I'd recommend this.
