For any of us, what stays? For the arsonist's wife who has not yet left? The devout saint trudging another mile in his nail-shoes? The lost couple in their dying moments in a Nebraska blizzard? The old woman who refuses to leave her home in Chernobyl? With an unflinching eye, James Crews gives us the forbidden love, forbidden unions, and secret lives that, whatever the loss, the attrition, the cost, we must acknowledge, must hold, must keep. And here, in Crews's finely wrought, deeply felt poems, is their testimony.
James Crews was the 2009 recipient of the Prairie Schooner Bernice Slote Award for Emerging Writers. He is the author of What Has Not Yet Left, winner of the 2009 Copperdome Prize; One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes; and Bending the Knot, winner of the 2008 Gertrude Press Chapbook Prize. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
AcknowledgmentsPart I Palomino The Abandoned Church of St. Mary Magdalene Paradoxical Undressing Sex in the Rain Catch Regret Against Seizing Foreshadowing The Birds Have Not Yet Left Chernobyl Orpheus, Still Singing A Beginner's Guide to Ice Fishing An Unexpected Warm Day in Wisconsin Looking Back The Farmer's Wife Has Not Yet Left Him Dare to Speak After Revelation Revision Part II One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes 1. (Proof) 2. (Total Eclipse) 3. (City of Gold, City of Salt) 4. (The Gold Field) 5. (Wawanaisa Lake: Ross) 6. (Wawanaisa Lake) 7. (Nowhere Better Than This Place) 8. (Letter to Felix: Ross) 9. (Perfect Lovers) 10. (The Raising of Lazarus) 11. (Golden) 12. (Lover Boys) 13. (Estimations: Ross) 14. (Aparicion) 15. (Fan Letter) 16. (Bedroom, After) 17. (Orpheus, Twice) 18. (One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes) 19. (Last Light) 20. (Assumption) Part III What Light Does Metacognition With This Kiss Les Cendres The Arsonist's Wife Has Not Yet Left Him Leonardo, Lovelorn in Santa Babila The Naming How to Write a Love Poem Saints Sergius and Bacchus: A Martyrology Like Angels Calamus, Not Drowning Anniversary The Gardeners Red-Tailed Hawk, Summer Storm The Bees Have Not Yet Left Us Notes
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
"Crews's aptly titled debut collection has staying power galore. In his lyrical, pitch-perfect renditions of regret and loss, this poet bears exacting witness to the parallel world of acceptance and renewal animated everywhere by the dizzying physics of human grace under pressure. In describing a homeless woman's cart brimming with empty cans and copper wiring - the 'shining and weighty cargo / of grief she's headed to redeem' - Crews shows us where he's going, too. And when he elsewhere promises 'a fast river you can follow to its source / if you believe the motto here has always been Forward,' the poet's hard-won optimism is nothing less than a revitalizing tonic. When all is said, if not quite done, what stays with the reader are these bracing poems: sustenance for the undeniably long haul." David Clewell, author of Taken Somehow by Surprise
