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    The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible
    The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible
    The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible
    Ebook80 pages23 minutes

    The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible

    By Walter Wangerin Jr. and Scott Cairns

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    About this ebook

    The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible is a volume of poems divided into three parts. The three parts are bound together by a brace of persistent and developing themes, as well as by the repetition (and the development) of language, metaphor, and imagery.
    Part 1 presents various characters (mostly African American) confronting death.
    The poems in part 2 are spoken by an unnamed narrator about his cancer. My cancer, actually, and my experiences.
    Parts 2 and 3 both descend into silence.
    Part 3 is a radical reworking of the ancient Mesopotamian epic loosely known as The Songs of Heaven and Hell. The poems are not a translation, though each derives from a separate song, and each uses the characters, the events, the worldview, and the stark imagery of Babylon in the third century BCE. In many respects, these poems have the prosody of the biblical psalms.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCascade Books
    Release dateMay 31, 2017
    ISBN9781498240611
    The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible
    Author

    Walter Wangerin Jr.

    Walter Wangerin Jr. is widely recognized as one of the most gifted writers writing today on the issues of faith and spirituality. Known for his bestselling The Book of the Dun Cow, Wangerin’s writing voice is immediately recognizable, and his fans number in the millions. The author of over forty books including The Book of God, Wangerin has won the National Book Award and the New York Times Best Children’s Book of the Year Award. He lives in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he is Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University.

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      Book preview

      The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible - Walter Wangerin Jr.

      9781532616693.kindle.jpg

      The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible

      Walter Wangerin Jr.

      Foreword by Scott Cairns
      8454.png

      The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible

      Copyright © 2017 Walter Wangerin Jr. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1669-3

      hardcover isbn: x978-1-4982-4062-8

      ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-4061-1

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Wangerin, Walter, author | Cairns, Scott, foreword.

      Title: The absolute, relatively inaccessible / Walter Wangerin Jr. ; foreword by Scott Cairns.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-1669-3 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-4062-8 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-4982-4061-1 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Poetry.

      Classification: ps3573 a477. 2017 (paperback) | ps3573 (ebook).

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 08/15/17

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Foreword

      Adams’ Photograph of Stieglitz

      Part 1: Snow

      Cones of Snow

      Milk and Snow in Three Declensions

      A Torque of Time

      Gertrude’s Letter, Midwinter

      Miz Lillian’s Memorial Stones

      Et in Pacem

      Part 2: Cancer

      I. On an Age-Old Anvil, Wince and Sing

      II. Pain

      III. November

      IV. The Wanderer

      V. The better metaphor

      VI. Advice

      VII. Endnote

      VIII. Zero at the Bone

      IX. Slow time

      X. Time’s Gyre

      XI. Necrophagia: The Mastery of the Thing

      XII. The Effects of Radiation

      XIII. To Those I Haven’t Time to Write

      XIV.

      XV.

      Part 3: O Babylon!

      From the Mesopotamian Poems of Heaven and Hell

      II. From The Hymn of the Names of Marduk

      III. From A Prayer to the Gods of Night

      IV. From Childbirth

      V. From Inanna’s Journey into Hell

      VI. From Dumuzi Mourned

      VII. From The Son’s Reply

      VIII.

      Foreword

      When Mystery Matters Most

      Over the years, I have received a good many poems from a good many clergy folk who were keen to offer their wisdom in verse form. Most often—nearly always—what they have offered is but a curiously unsatisfying species of sermon. Their slender texts generally manifest little sense of why they were not simply presented in prose, or simply offered from the pulpit of a Sunday morning.

      Genuine poems,

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