Tess Gallagher’s new poems are suspended between contradiction and beauty
Is, Is Not
Poems
- “These pages brim with wisdom as they demonstrate the profound interdependence of us all: animals, dreams, people and landscapes.”—Washington Post
Three stars
looked down on me
with so much dark
between, the word
“together” would be
trespass, except for
the greater dark
that gave their light
an intimacy of
multitudes. And if
I shut my eyes I was
a memory of
multitudes until
I opened that dark on
just those three
the instant before
they took me
in. And though
I tell you this
we are unspoken.
—“Three Stars”
looked down on me
with so much dark
between, the word
“together” would be
trespass, except for
the greater dark
that gave their light
an intimacy of
multitudes. And if
I shut my eyes I was
a memory of
multitudes until
I opened that dark on
just those three
the instant before
they took me
in. And though
I tell you this
we are unspoken.
—“Three Stars”
Is, Is Not upends our notions of linear time, evokes the spirit and sanctity of place, and journeys toward discovering the full capacity of language. Gallagher’s poems reverberate with the inward clarity of a bell struck on a mountaintop and hover daringly at the threshold of what language can nearly deliver while offering alternative corollaries as gifts of its failures. Guided by humor, grace, and a deep inquiry into the natural world, every poem nudges us toward moments of awe. How else except by delight and velocity would we discover the miracle within the ordinary?
Gallagher claims many Wests—the Northwest of America, the Northwest of Ireland, and a West even further to the edge, beyond the physical. These landscapes are charged with invisible energies and inhabited by the people, living and dead, who shape Gallagher’s poems and life. Restorative in every sense, Is, Is Not is the kind of book that takes a lifetime to write—a book of the spirit made manifest by the poet’s unrelenting gaze and her intimate engagement with the mysteries that keep us reaching.
Gallagher claims many Wests—the Northwest of America, the Northwest of Ireland, and a West even further to the edge, beyond the physical. These landscapes are charged with invisible energies and inhabited by the people, living and dead, who shape Gallagher’s poems and life. Restorative in every sense, Is, Is Not is the kind of book that takes a lifetime to write—a book of the spirit made manifest by the poet’s unrelenting gaze and her intimate engagement with the mysteries that keep us reaching.
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Tess Gallagher’s new poems are suspended between contradiction and beauty
About the Author
Credit: Morella Muñoz-Tebar
Praise
- “Each poem, fully realized, builds toward a collection that is luminous and far ranging– both in substance and in form.”—Oregonian
- “Is, Is Not is a thorough and unapologetic exploration of the self. Gallagher’s poems, like the shattered reflection of the moon in the ever-changing flowing water of the world, reveal various parts of that self—sometimes coherent, sometimes ambiguous and evasive—as it is transformed by experience.”—Harvard Review
- “While impressively wide-ranging in its intellectual inquiry, . . . Gallagher’s craft excels as she balances image and abstraction, grounding the wild flights of the speaker’s philosophical imagination.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
- “[In Is, Is Not,] carefully constructed reveries are a bridge between then and now, consciousness and belief. . . . This is the joy of poetry, for both writer and reader: each poem is handmade on the page. . . . Readers of quiet, thoughtful poetry will find much to savor.”—Library Journal
