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The poems in The Keep are influenced by art, by paintings, by “thinking about abstraction and figuration and the space between, beauty apprehended and lost, the divine apprehended and lost.” Emily Wilson's poems are also saturated with nature; from “the great oaks emptying, russet, gusseted” to “the caribou mov[ing] through us beyond numerous,” each image connects the natural world of tides and marshes and forests to the human world of documentation and preservation. The image of the keep as a place of safety and as a kind of prison also informs this very strong collection.

“‘Someone must know what is called for / to be mortal, / to go up close,’Emily Wilson says early in her astonishing debut, The Keep—and then shows us precisely what is called for: the calibration of ruin and song, a figuring of 'the slim pass between good / and untenable,' and a vision courageous enough to live with there being no easy negotiating of that pass, unless via the poems themselves—deft, spare, striking in their refusal to acquiesce to the late uneasiness with authority and in their ability to make of the natural world a place seen as if for the first time. Wilson's is a powerful, original, and long-necessary voice.”—Carl Phillips

Paperback

ISBN-13
9780877457732
Retail price
$16.00
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Publication Details

Publication Details

Publication Date
04/25/2001
Pages
96
Trim size
5.5 x 8.5
Edition
1st