Time and Chance - (Joan Books) by Katharine Coles (Paperback)

About the Book

"Majestic, playful, brainy, heart-wrenching, Katharine Coles's tenth collection of poems at once celebrates and elegizes: her teachers and parents-both dead at ninety-who still issue advice (some good, some not) from beyond the grave; the creatures who pass through her canyon quarter-acre; the moon as it rises and sets; even her Levi's shrink-to-fits, when she realizes she'll never wear out another pair. The poems "guide us with their empathy, sometimes yoked with a wry irony, around the physics of interactions." [John Kinsella] More than anything, this is a book about presence: haunted by the past yet firmly rooted in the also-haunting now, Coles keeps spinning, finding herself in words, in her body, in time"--

Book Synopsis

Majestic, playful, brainy, heart-wrenching, Katharine Coles's tenth collection of poems at once celebrates and elegizes: her teachers and parents--both dead at ninety--who still issue advice (some good, some not) from beyond the grave; the creatures who pass through her canyon quarter-acre; the moon as it rises and sets; even her Levi's shrink-to-fits, when she realizes she'll never wear out another pair. The poems "guide us with their empathy, sometimes yoked with a wry irony, around the physics of interactions." [John Kinsella] More than anything, this is a book about presence: haunted by the past yet firmly rooted in the also-haunting now, Coles keeps spinning, finding herself in words, in her body, in time.

Review Quotes

"Time and Chance resonates with an intensity of sculpted lines and precise language. It is such a tactile book, so much so I am reminded of the fineness yet incredible strength of spider's web. Each poem is whittled into a shape that imparts meaning with acuity and specificity. But this is also a conceptual book about points of contact between the physical and spiritual worlds--a book of loss and recovery, of recollection and processing of that loss. The body, in all its vulnerabilities, shapes the book across its sections, and the senses are placed under biological and notional pressure, adjusting to interpret a damaged and changing world. Whether it's an intense closeness to animals, or a re-embodying personal loss through elegy, or sharp philosophical contemplation about language, matter, and the physical world we inhabit, Katharine Coles's poems guide us with their empathy, sometimes yoked with a wry irony, around the physics of interactions." --JOHN KINSELLA

About the Author

Time and Chance is Katharine Coles's tenth collection of poems. Turtle Point Press also published her collection (Solve for) X, her collection of essays, The Stranger I Become: On Walking, Looking, and Writing, and her memoir, Look Both Ways: A Double Journey Along My Grandmother's Far-flung Path. A Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she teaches courses in creative writing, poetry, and poetics, she has received grants and awards from The Guggenheim Foundation, the US National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writer Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.