Every Substance Clothed: Poems

The material world of Every Substance Clothed is robed in the sensual, and sometimes the metaphysical. Ritual trappings are altered for contemporary use: ribbon from a bridal veil ties up sugar snap pea vines, a communion host is slipped between a lover's mattress and box spring, grace descends on a couple looking for Venus's-flytraps in a maritime forest, an elderly Finnish immigrant holds last rites before she dies at peace, alone. In these contemporary expreiences of the sacred, the spiritual is material and unsentimental, profound and penetrable, often wryly humorous. Examined in Every Substance Clothed is the unending struggle for a word relationship to the world, to culture, and to the inner life.


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