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In the poem-essays that comprise A Duration, writing is a physical act where writing and lived experience support one another in bodies—animal, plant, mineral, and word bodies—that are injured and heal, that die and continue in new forms, playing new roles.
Here, in his fifth book, Richard Meier transmutes years of daily practices of attention—be it to a line spoken by Lear’s Fool, a train to Kingston, or “red inside green stem below eight white petals in a spiral with space between them attached to the yellow center”—into mesmerizing trajectories through an always unfolding present. In the collapse of the border between writing and the body, A Duration, “play[s] both hearts with a heartbeat and kinship of place, time, mundanity in the continuous onrushing imagined joy.”
—Sylee Gore, Poetry Foundation
"Meier tracks the near impossibility of inhabiting the present moment by recognizing the brevity of an instant's lifespan alongside the longevity of its consequence. This is the paradox of a plein air practice: the vision is uncatchable, shifting as one reaches for it. ...[t]he reverse is true as well: patience, rehearsal, and endurance will summon the unanticipated image."
—Caryl Pagel, Poetry Northwest
"Throughout A Duration is the deep image fully realized as the word conjures company—i.e., another person, or at least presence. What transcends the physical more than the relation of the I-Thou?"
—Abigail Chabitnoy, The Colorado Review
Richard Meier’s second book of poetry, Shelley Gave Jane a Guitar, was published by Wave Books in 2006. His first book, Terrain Vague, was selected by Tomaž Šalamun for the Verse Prize and published by Verse Press in 2001. His book In the Pure Block of the Whole Imaginary was published by Omnidawn in 2012. He is writer-in-residence at Carthage College and lives in Chicago, IL and Madison, WI.
Contents
Acting
TiP TOE SOT
Necessity
This present tense
Passo