Takes the reader on a journey through time and place, with stops along the way to visit Madame Curie, Charlie Parker, Scheherazade, Madame Bovary, Lee Harvey Oswald’s coffin, and God, among others.
Threnodies is a collection of poetry and prose poems that takes the reader on a journey through time and place. Some pieces conjure up distant memories; others reflect our shared experience. Along the way, visits are made to Madame Curie, Charlie Parker, Scheherazade, Madame Bovary, Lee Harvey Oswald’s coffin, and God, among others, in this series of rest stops for the eternal traveler.
Laurence Carr teaches dramatic and creative writing at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of Pancake Hollow Primer: A Hudson Valley Story and The Wytheport Tales, the coeditor (with Jan Zlotnik Schmidt) of A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley and the coeditor (with Joann Deiudicibus, Penny Freel, and Rachel Rigolino) of WaterWrites: A Hudson River Anthology in Celebration of the Hudson 400, and the editor of Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, all published by Codhill Press.
Table of Contents
Part I. Threnodies
for Scheherazade
for Antonin Artaud
Madame Curie’s Notebooks|
for René Magritte
for Emma Bovary
Night Flight (Suite Charlie Parker)
for Duncan Renaldo, The Cisco Kid
Remembering Cythera
Lovesongs I
Arctic Fox
rainy season
My Planet X
Lovesongs II
Part II. Threnodies
for Lee Harvey Oswald’s Coffin
what they talk about before their meds kick in
for Stevie Smith— from long distance
a hundred iridescents
for that homeless man who’s no longer there
for Laurence Carr
Ur Topia
Adrift
Riverbed
a meeting place
thanks
footsteps
hands
nightwalk
directions
Faith in Doubt
washing up on unknown shores
demi-god
god notes genesis draft 1.0
poor God
waving in parts
Part III. Threnodies
The Race
On His Birthday
for the woodworker
for the old men
for the Usherette at the Roxy 1939 (and Edward Hopper)
