{"product_id":"red-to-the-rind-isbn-9780375709791","title":"Red to the Rind","description":"“Behold the door \/ the lock’s alive,” warns Stan Rice in one of the commanding poems that make up this new volume of verse. From the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras to the private chambers of the imagination, Rice’s work is at times sharp and minimalist and at times over the top in its vivid critique of life and in its regard for the sanctity that lurks in all experience. In these concise, memorable verses, he contemplates the stroller-pushing crowd in the American mall; he maps the complex traffic of a marriage; he speaks to the cat bristling in the closet: “—for you, \/ For your on-tiptoe hissing \/ Slit-pupiled arched-backed tail- \/ Stiffened terror, this song.” Throughout, Rice sings of the darkness that conflicts us and of the moments of pure consciousness that allow us to transcend darkness.\"I have long loved Stan Rice's poems. He is an absolute master of the minimum, the deeply suggestive, the terrifying. He doesn't write with any self-congratulatory self-consciousness, but out of deep knowledge, for which I am grateful.\" \u003cbr\u003e--Gerald SternStan Rice is the author of six collections of poetry, including \u003ci\u003eThe Radiance of Pigs, Fear Itself,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSinging Yet\u003c\/i\u003e. He has been the recipient of the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Formerly a professor of English and Creative Writing and Chairman of the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University, he now lives in New Orleans with his wife, the novelist Anne Rice.\u003cb\u003eNearly Dissolving\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was sitting on my porch\u003cbr\u003eIn yellow shorts\u003cbr\u003eWhen I felt the universe\u003cbr\u003eBrush up against me;\u003cbr\u003eThe sun, the stars, the galaxies;\u003cbr\u003eThe breeze on my ear, the insects;\u003cbr\u003eThe whole of it; and it scared me;\u003cbr\u003eAnd I paused; making sure I didnt fall in\u003cbr\u003eAnd go crazy; feeling it, not becoming it;\u003cbr\u003eUntil it passed; and I was Me\u003cbr\u003eAgain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBehold\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeople wake up in the middle of the night.\u003cbr\u003eNo, not in the middle. Deep in their brains.\u003cbr\u003eThey know the present, the little braveries.\u003cbr\u003eWe lock our doors from the inside.\u003cbr\u003eWe want to be delivered.\u003cbr\u003eWe want the patience of mirrors.\u003cbr\u003eWe want not to be torn in two by a brown river.\u003cbr\u003eWe want the courage to dive\u003cbr\u003eOff the high board into human eyes.\u003cbr\u003eBehold the door.\u003cbr\u003eThe lock’s alive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Strangeness\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe strangeness of others–\u003cbr\u003eEven your sisters and brothers–\u003cbr\u003eIs a responsibility to\u003cbr\u003eOvercome–or some night they will be lying\u003cbr\u003eIn a bed dying–and how you loved them,\u003cbr\u003eIts quality–will be as unknown\u003cbr\u003eTo you as your own mother was\u003cbr\u003eWhile a living stranger.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305356710117,"sku":"NP9780375709791","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375709791.jpg?v=1767735556","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/red-to-the-rind-isbn-9780375709791","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}