Hazmat

By J.D. McClatchy

Book Overview

HAZMAT, meaning "hazardous material," is an abbreviation familiar from signs at the entrances to long dark tunnels or on the sides of suspicious containers. Here, in a series of stunning poems, J. D. McClatchy examines the first hazmat we all encounter: our own bodies. The virtuosic "Tattoos" meditates on why we decorate the body's surface, while other poems plunge daringly inward, capturing the way in which everything that makes us human-desire and decay, need and curiosity, the jarring sense of loss and mortality-hovers in the flesh. In the midst of it all is the heart, its treacheries, its gnawing grievances, its boundless capacities.

With their stark titles ("Cancer," "Feces," "Jihad"), McClatchy's poems work dazzling variations on this book's theme: how we live with the fact that we will die. Crowned by the twenty-part sequence "Motets," which deals out an exquisite hand of emotional crises, this collection brings us a sumptuous weave of impassioned thought and clear-sighted feeling. Holding up a powerful poetic mirror, McClatchy shows us our very selves in a chilling series of images: the melodrama of the body being played out, as it must be, in the theater of the spirit.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375709916
• ISBN13: 9780375709913
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Hazmat

Hazmat was a wonderful collection of all sorts of poems. There were Tankas, and Haikus, and even some I didn't know such as Canzone, and Epigram. I thought that these forms were really intricate, and hard to do. I did enjoy the word use though. I thought that it was really cool the way he used words, and painted pictures. An example that sticks in my mind is; She blacks her hair, and powders her face, getting ready to fight the evil. I would recommend this awesome collection to anyone who enjoys grammar and is interested in different forms of poetry. All in all this was a wonderful book comprised of amazing work!

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED HAZARDOUS MATERIAL

The jacket tells you that HAZMAT means "hazardous material" and is an abbreviation used on signs at the entrances to long tunnels and suspicious containers. Well, the poems in J.D. McClatchy's HAZMAT are highly hazardous! Do not fear going through that tunnel or opening that lid. Stunning eye-openers and maximum pleasurable reading from beginning to end. Long live, JD!