LEADER 03998nam 22006374a 450 001 9910782995703321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a0-226-74097-8 010 $a1-282-00500-6 010 $a9786612005008 024 7 $a10.7208/9780226740973 035 $a(CKB)1000000000722579 035 $a(EBL)432293 035 $a(OCoLC)567909357 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000113152 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11129842 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000113152 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10098639 035 $a(PQKB)11373058 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC432293 035 $a(DE-B1597)524377 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780226740973 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL432293 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10275449 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL200500 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000722579 100 $a20070620d2008 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur|n|---||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aBlessings for the hands$b[electronic resource] /$fMatthew Schwartz 210 $aChicago $cUniversity of Chicago Press$dc2008 215 $a1 online resource (82 p.) 225 1 $aPhoenix poets 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 $a0-226-74094-3 311 $a0-226-74095-1 327 $tFrontmatter -- $tContents -- $tAcknowledgments -- $tChapter 1 -- $tChapter 2 -- $tChapter 3 330 $aFrom The Sky Inside the Shaking Tree What you feel reveals you. Watch for the sustenance inclined to a source, enamored of singularity, quickly here and quickly gone, shadow from which the body's courage comes. Fireflies apparently stumbling. I slapped one on my leg. Its blood glowed. Blessings for the Hands follows various speakers-often disabled speakers, who never once figure themselves as objects of complaint or self-pity-through the haunted dreamscape of "normalcy." Indeed, dreams are continuous presences in this unusually subtle and elegant debut collection that juxtaposes physical circumstances with the vast interior life of the imagination. The subjects of Blessings for the Hands are real and imagined confrontations-and reconciliations-between family members, friends, strangers, and animals. Matthew Schwartz's quasi-autobiographical verse complicates and clarifies the emotions waiting just underneath the patterns and expectations of the speakers' daylight lives, where anger, joy, corporeality, and mortality all seem to collide. For Schwartz, poetry is a sleight of hand that keeps the reader guessing through nearly imperceptible shifts between present vision and absent reality. Blessings for the Hands is a lyric reckoning of the tension between the life we are given and the life we are determined to lead. "Blessings for the Hands is emotionally strong and imaginatively wild, distinctive, deeply moving, without an ort of self-pity, and pervaded by 'compassion down to your fingertips' (which Chekhov said is 'the only method' both to write and to live). This angle of vision is sharp enough to unify much disparate material. The poems are clear and musical and consequently a pleasure to read and reread despite their gravity. I think this may be lasting work."-Michael Ryan 410 0$aPhoenix poets. 606 $aPoetry 606 $aPOETRY / General$2bisacsh 610 $apoetry, disability, norms, literature, contemporary, poetics, creative writing, agency, autonomy, strength, power, reconciliation, confrontation, emotion, affect, mortality, corporeality, anger, joy, compassion, grief, difference, body, healing, crutches, mobility, imperfection, stumbling, human nature, society, gratitude, meaning. 615 0$aPoetry. 615 7$aPOETRY / General. 676 $a811/.6 700 $aSchwartz$b Matthew$f1977-$01484673 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910782995703321 996 $aBlessings for the hands$93703439 997 $aUNINA