{"product_id":"the-earliest-witnesses-paperback","title":"The Earliest Witnesses - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eG. C. Waldrep\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the poems of The Earliest Witnesses, witnesses need a place to begin-they spiral off from a walk, a church, an orchard, to go into deeper meditation about faith, earth, restraint, desire, and violence. Waldrep's seventh collection begins where his prior collection, feast gently, left off: \"This \/ is how the witness ends: touch, withdraw; touch again,\" according to the opening poem. The status of witnesses is never constant and never settled in this book: sometimes, witnesses \"foster,\" \"touch,\" and \"stain\" the places they inhabit; other times, they befriend, or document, or think. Sometimes, witnesses forget themselves-in questions of blame and responsibility-and sometimes they feel forgotten and unknown. If these are poems of witness, then they are also testators to the craft of seeing: \"Can you see this,\" the ophthalmologist in \"A Mystic's Guide to Arches\" asks over and over again. Here, sight facilitates and impedes desire; it colludes with language itself. \"She said, When you say pear, I see p-e-a-r for a second before I see, in my mind's eye, a pear,\" Waldrep carefully records in \"[West Stow Orchard Poem (II)].\" The desire-poems in The Earliest Witnesses want the thing itself, its image of the mind, and the language that transmutes both thing and image into song.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 130\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.31 x 8.5 x 5.5 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e January 01, 2021\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51773937418528,"sku":"9781946482488","price":21.83,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/8dfc972a4ebb928ec77c6f6e38182be0_106abf59-c3c4-4379-87e1-59081553ff5d.webp?v=1780436306","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/the-earliest-witnesses-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}