{"product_id":"hazmat-isbn-9780375709913","title":"Hazmat","description":"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.     \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith 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.J. D. McClatchy is the author of four earlier books of poems, \u003cb\u003eScenes from Another Life\u003c\/b\u003e (1981), \u003cb\u003eStars Principal \u003c\/b\u003e(1986), \u003cb\u003eThe Rest of the Way \u003c\/b\u003e(1990), and\u003cb\u003e Ten Commandments\u003c\/b\u003e (1998). His literary essays are collected in \u003cb\u003eWhite Pape\u003c\/b\u003er (1989) and\u003cb\u003e Twenty Questions\u003c\/b\u003e (1998). He is the editor of \u003cb\u003eThe Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry\u003c\/b\u003e (1990) and \u003cb\u003eThe Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry \u003c\/b\u003e(1996), as well as a co-editor of \u003cb\u003eJames Merrill’s Collected Poems\u003c\/b\u003e (2001) and \u003cb\u003eCollected Novels and Plays \u003c\/b\u003e(2002). The author of several opera libretti, McClatchy is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches at Yale University and is editor of The Yale Review.\u003cb\u003ePibroch\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut now that I am used to pain,\u003cbr\u003eIts knuckles in my mouth the same\u003cbr\u003eToday as yesterday, the cause\u003cbr\u003eAs clear-obscure as who’s to blame,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA fascination with the flaws\u003cbr\u003eSets in-the plundered heart, the pause\u003cbr\u003eBetween those earnest, oversold\u003cbr\u003eLiberties that took like laws.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat should have been I never told,\u003cbr\u003eAfraid of outbursts you’d withhold.\u003cbr\u003eWhy are desires something to share?\u003cbr\u003eI’m shivering, though it isn’t cold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeneath your window, I stand and stare.\u003cbr\u003eThe planets turn. The trees are bare.\u003cbr\u003eI’ll toss a pebble at the pane,\u003cbr\u003eBut softly, knowing you are not there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGlanum\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eat the ruins of a provincial Roman town\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo this is the city of love.\u003cbr\u003eI lean on a rail above\u003cbr\u003eIts ruined streets and square\u003cbr\u003eStill wondering how to care\u003cbr\u003eFor a studiously unbuilt site\u003cbr\u003eNow walled and roofed with light.\u003cbr\u003eA glider's wing overhead\u003cbr\u003eEclipses the Nike treads\u003cbr\u003eOn a path once freshly swept\u003cbr\u003eWhere trader and merchant kept\u003cbr\u003eA guarded company.\u003cbr\u003eAs far as the eye can see\u003cbr\u003eThe pampered gods had blessed\u003cbr\u003eThe temples, the gates, the harvest,\u003cbr\u003eThe baths and sacred spring,\u003cbr\u003eSistrum, beacon, bowstring.\u003cbr\u003eEach man remembered his visit\u003cbr\u003eTo the capital's exquisite\u003cbr\u003eLibraries or whores.\u003cbr\u003eThe women gossiped more\u003cbr\u003eAbout the one-legged crow\u003cbr\u003eFound in a portico\u003cbr\u003eOf the forum, an omen\u003cbr\u003eThat sluggish priests again\u003cbr\u003eInsisted required prayer.\u003cbr\u003eA son's corpse elsewhere\u003cbr\u003eWas wrapped in a linen shroud.\u003cbr\u003eA distant thundercloud\u003cbr\u003eMimicked a slumping pine\u003cbr\u003eThat tendrils of grape entwined.\u003cbr\u003eSomeone kicked a dog.\u003cbr\u003eThe orator's catalogue\u003cbr\u003ePrompted worried nods\u003cbr\u003eOver issues soon forgot.\u003cbr\u003eA cock turned on a spit.\u003cbr\u003eA slave felt homesick.\u003cbr\u003eThe underclass of scribes\u003cbr\u003eWas saved from envy by pride.\u003cbr\u003eThe always invisible legion\u003cbr\u003eFought what it would become.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e. . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe call it ordinary\u003cbr\u003eLife—banal, wary,\u003cbr\u003eAble to withdraw\u003cbr\u003eFrom chaos or the law,\u003cbr\u003eIntent on the body's tides\u003cbr\u003eAnd the mysteries disguised\u003cbr\u003eAt the bedside or the hearth,\u003cbr\u003eWhere all things come apart.\u003cbr\u003eThere must have been a point--\u003cbr\u003eWhile stone to stone was joined,\u003cbr\u003eAll expectation and sweat,\u003cbr\u003eThe cautious haste of the outset--\u003cbr\u003eWhen the city being built,\u003cbr\u003eIn its chalky thrust and tilt,\u003cbr\u003eResembled just for a day\u003cbr\u003eWhat's now a labeled display,\u003cbr\u003eThese relics of the past,\u003cbr\u003eA history recast\u003cbr\u003eAs remarkable rubble,\u003cbr\u003eBroken column, muddled\u003cbr\u003eInscription back when\u003cbr\u003eOnly half up, half done.\u003cbr\u003eNow only the ruins are left,\u003cbr\u003eA wall some bricks suggest,\u003cbr\u003eA doorway into nothing,\u003cbr\u003eLast year's scaffolding.\u003cbr\u003eBy design the eye is drawn\u003cbr\u003eTo something undergone.\u003cbr\u003eA single carving remains\u003cbr\u003eThe plunder never claimed,\u003cbr\u003eAnd no memories of guilt\u003cbr\u003eCan wear upon or thrill\u003cbr\u003eThis scarred relief of a man\u003cbr\u003eAnd woman whom love will strand,\u003cbr\u003eTheir faces worn away,\u003cbr\u003eTheir heartache underplayed,\u003cbr\u003eJust turning as if to find\u003cbr\u003eSomething to put behind\u003cbr\u003eThem, an emptiness\u003cbr\u003eOf uncarved rock, an excess\u003cbr\u003eOf sharp corrosive doubt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e. . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow everything's left out\u003cbr\u003eTo rain and wind and star,\u003cbr\u003eNature's repertoire\u003cbr\u003eOf indifference or gloom.\u003cbr\u003eThis French blue afternoon,\u003cbr\u003eFor instance, how easily\u003cbr\u003eThe light falls on debris,\u003cbr\u003eHow calmly the valley awaits\u003cbr\u003eWhatever tonight frustrates,\u003cbr\u003eHow quickly the small creatures\u003cbr\u003eScurry from the sunlight's slur,\u003cbr\u003eHow closely it all comes to seem\u003cbr\u003eLike details on the table between\u003cbr\u003eUs at dinner yesterday,\u003cbr\u003eOur slab of sandstone laid\u003cbr\u003eWith emblems for a meal.\u003cbr\u003eKnife and fork. A deal.\u003cbr\u003eThistle-prick. Hollow bone.\u003cbr\u003eThe olive's flesh and stone.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44885844590821,"sku":"NP9780375709913","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375709913.jpg?v=1767728797","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/hazmat-isbn-9780375709913","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}