The Engrafted Word: Poems

By Karl Kirchwey

Book Overview

The graftings of flesh upon flesh, of history upon time and memory, of the New World on the Old, of language upon silence, of faith upon doubt: These are the graftings that form this third book of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805056076
• ISBN13: 9780805056075
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.3" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Layer upon Layer

Kirchwey does an amazing job of synthesizing ideas from a number of spheres- such as obstetrics, physics, superstition, mythology, biology, religion, chemistry, Roman history and poetry. Kirchwey accomplishes said task by engrafting technical words upon each other, words that outwardly have little in common. Moreover, Kirchwey's great use of setting enables me to feel the location of each poem. I need not piece stilted descriptions together in a linguistic, logical manner, but rather, I subconsciously gain a poignant and fluid perception of my surroundings. And again, I think Kirchwey achieves this through diction specific to the time and region. He magically engrafts the past with the present, my familiarities with his familiarities, and our modern-day collective representations with those of peoples' long ago. Bravo.