{"product_id":"in-the-lateness-of-the-world-isbn-9780525560425","title":"In the Lateness of the World","description":"\u003cb\u003eFINALIST FOR THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY\u003cbr\u003e2021 AMERICAN BOOK AWARD WINNER\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An undisputed literary event.” —NPR\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“History—with its construction and its destruction—is at the heart of \u003ci\u003eIn the Lateness of the World\u003c\/i\u003e. . . . In [it] one feels the poet cresting a wave—a new wave that will crash onto new lands and unexplored territories.” —Hilton Als, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Over four decades, Carolyn Forché’s visionary work has reinvigorated poetry’s power to awaken the reader. Her groundbreaking poems have been testimonies, inquiries, and wonderments. They daringly map a territory where poetry asserts our inexhaustible responsibility to one another.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her first new collection in seventeen years, \u003ci\u003eIn the Lateness of the World\u003c\/i\u003e is a tenebrous book of crossings, of migrations across oceans and borders but also between the present and the past, life and death. The world here seems to be steadily vanishing, but in the moments before the uncertain end, an illumination arrives and “there is nothing that cannot be seen.” \u003ci\u003eIn the Lateness of the World\u003c\/i\u003e is a revelation from one of the finest poets writing today.“The title of Carolyn Forché’s new collection seems prophetic. Seventeen years in the making, \u003ci\u003eIn the Lateness of the World\u003c\/i\u003e is an act of witness, going repeatedly into the darkness of death and loss. . . .  Forché’s almost incantatory way with image produces a strange tone, spell-bound but also emotionally charged, in which time and place shift and blur—because we’re all implicated.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Forché’s stately stanzas—her writing is never hurried—are the work of a literary reporter, Gloria Emerson as filtered through the eyes of Elizabeth Bishop or Grace Paley. Free of jingoism but not of moral gravity, Forché’s work questions—when it does question—how to be or to become a thinking, caring, communicating adult. Taken together, Forché’s five books of verse—the most recent, ‘In the Lateness of the World’ (Penguin Press), was published in March—are about action: memory as action, vision and writing as action. She asks us to consider the sometimes unrecognized, though always felt, ways in which power inserts itself into our lives and to think about how we can move forward with what we know. History—with its construction and its destruction—is at the heart of ‘In the Lateness of the World’ . . . In [it] one feels the poet cresting a wave—a new wave that will crash onto new lands and unexplored territories.” \u003cb\u003e—Hilton Als,\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Amid almost incomprehensible world devastation, [\u003ci\u003eIn the Lateness of the World\u003c\/i\u003e] reminds us that personhood and acknowledgement by the other are gifts that poetry, with its associative, nonlinear forms of thinking and embodied forms of knowing, is uniquely positioned to offer.” \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Boston Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eIn the Lateness of the World\u003c\/i\u003e is a testament to the aftermath of human culture . . . Forché’s belief that it is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth from these wounded cities creates poems that are sometimes difficult to reckon with even as they soar in moments of unexpected beauty.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An undisputed literary event.” \u003cb\u003e—Craig Morgan Teicher, \u003ci\u003eNPR\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Anyone familiar with Forché’s work knows that her poetry of witness moves well beyond stunning imagery, having broad implications for the lives it hopes to remember and the readers it hopes to implore. . . . There is in these poems a sense of responsibility: to the fullness of lives unnecessarily unbound; to poetry and its insistence on meaning; to attention and action, no matter the cost.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWorld Literature Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Carolyn Forché's fourth poetry collection, \u003ci\u003eBlue Hour\u003c\/i\u003e, appeared in 2003, and her readers have longed for the next ever since. It’s hard to imagine any poetry book worth a wait of 17 years. Forché’s new collection, \u003ci\u003eIn the Lateness of the World,\u003c\/i\u003e is worth more.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSojourners\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Auden once wrote that poetry makes nothing happen, but in Forche's work, her life-long commitment to poetry and the poetic utterance, we see how poetry can transform. Both \u003ci\u003eWhat You Have Heard Is True\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eIn the Lateness of the World\u003c\/i\u003e are essential reading not only for anyone interested in poetry, but in the world we live in.” \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003e(Ireland)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Throughout her career, Forché has forged poems of witness, and she does so here with beauty and lyricism.”  —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eCarolyn Forché is an American poet, translator, and memoirist. Her books of poetry are \u003ci\u003eBlue Hour\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Angel of History\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e The Country Between Us\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eGathering the Tribes\u003c\/i\u003e. Her memoir, \u003ci\u003eWhat You Have Heard Is True\u003c\/i\u003e, was published by Penguin Press in 2019. In 2013, Forché received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship given for distinguished poetic achievement. In 2017, she became one of the first two poets to receive the Windham-Campbell Prize. She is a University Professor at Georgetown University. She lives in Maryland with her husband, photographer Harry Mattison.\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMuseum of Stones\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese are your stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ecollected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ebattlefield, threshing floor, basilica, abattoir-\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estones, loosened by tanks in the streets,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003efrom a city whose earliest map was drawn in ink on linen,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eschoolyard stones in the hand of a corpse,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003epebble from Baudelaire's oui,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estone of the mind within us\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ecarried from one silence to another,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estone of cromlech and cairn, schist and shale, hornblende,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eagate, marble, millstones, ruins of choirs and shipyards,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003echalk, marl, mudstone from temples and tombs,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estone from the silvery grass near the scaffold,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estone from the tunnel lined with bones,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003elava of a city's entombment, stones\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003echipped from lighthouse, cell wall, scriptorium,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003epaving stones from the hands of those who rose against the army,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estones where the bells had fallen, where the bridges were blown,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethose that had flown through windows, weighted petitions,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003efeldspar, rose quartz, blue schist, gneiss, and chert,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003efragments of an abbey at dusk, sandstone toe\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eof a Buddha mortared at Bamian,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estone from the hill of three crosses and a crypt,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003efrom a chimney where storks cried like human children,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estones newly fallen from stars, a stillness of stones, a heart,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ealtar and boundary stone, marker and vessel, first cast, load and hail,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ebridge stones and others to pave and shut up with,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estone apple, stone basil, beech, berry, stone brake,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003econcretion of the body, as blind as cold as deaf,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eall earth a quarry, all life a labor, stone-faced, stone-drunk\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewith hope that this assemblage of rubble, taken together, would become\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ea shrine or holy place, an ossuary, immovable and sacred\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003elike the stone that marked the path of the sun as it entered the human dawn.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Boatman\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe were thirty-one souls, he said, in the gray-sick of sea\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ein a cold rubber boat, rising and falling in our filth.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy morning this didn't matter, no land was in sight,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eall were soaked to the bone, living and dead.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe could still float, we said, from war to war.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat lay behind us but ruins of stone piled on ruins of stone?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCity called \"mother of the poor\" surrounded by fields\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eof cotton and millet, city of jewelers and cloak-makers,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewith the oldest church in Christendom and the Sword of Allah.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf anyone remains there now, he assures, they would be utterly alone.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere is a hotel named for it in Rome two hundred meters\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003efrom the Piazza di Spagna, where you can have breakfast under\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethe portraits of film stars. There the staff cannot do enough for you.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut I am talking nonsense again, as I have since that night\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewe fetched a child, not ours, from the sea, drifting face-\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003edown in a life vest, its eyes taken by fish or the birds above us.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter that, Aleppo went up in smoke, and Raqqa came under a rain\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eof leaflets warning everyone to go. Leave, yes, but go where?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe lived through the Americans and Russians, through Americans\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eagain, many nights of death from the clouds, mornings surprised\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eto be waking from the sleep of death, still unburied and alive\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewith no safe place. Leave, yes, we'll obey the leaflets, but go where?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo the sea to be eaten, to the shores of Europe to be caged?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo camp misery and camp remain here. I ask you then, where?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYou tell me you are a poet. If so, our destination is the same.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI find myself now the boatman, driving a taxi at the end of the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI will see that you arrive safely, my friend, I will get you there.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304288833765,"sku":"NP9780525560425","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780525560425.jpg?v=1767729972","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/in-the-lateness-of-the-world-isbn-9780525560425","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}