3 posts tagged “death”
If you are a regular reader of Cormac McCarthy's fiction, the first thing that will strike you in this novel is the profound sense of human goodness and love that permeates this bleak landscape. I read this book as my mother moved toward death. It was close to the balm I needed.
In McCarthy's postapocalyptic world, there are no more "godspoke men". He imagines a world where morality is limited to small acts of love toward kin. Nothing else matters. Only a father and a grieving son can feel this in the deep-gut. Fortunately, there are many of us.
McCarthy finds and names our ash-soaked creosote landscape.
In McCarthy's postapocalyptic world, there are no more "godspoke men". He imagines a world where morality is limited to small acts of love toward kin. Nothing else matters. Only a father and a grieving son can feel this in the deep-gut. Fortunately, there are many of us.
McCarthy finds and names our ash-soaked creosote landscape.
Horror vacui, also known as cenophobia, is a fear of empty spaces. Thomas Heise's poetic treatment of Horror Vacui covers grief with an imagination that fills in every empty space without leaving the reader cramped by poetic density. For a young poet, Heise might be studied nicely next to Dickinson just to consider his nearly baffling approach to death. For him, all loss is personal. The seeing subject is the object in a state of decomposition and obliteration.
In the acknowledgments, Heise says, "My father: these poems are you"; consequently, the collection invites a hunch that readers are being dipped into a family funeral. A good portion of the book confirms suspicions and, with a chilling touch of familiar terror, takes us along on a tour of grief in general.
Heise accomplishes something that most poets should start envying today. He writes poems that stand alone and together with equal unity; like a symphony. While listening to the ghost music in Horror Vacui, a common whisper echoes words, phrases, rhymes, themes, and titles between poems. Themes build upon one another until we are actually, finally, buried with Heise and all of the other dead found in the ground.
At one point, Heise even takes on the 9/11 grief. I work in a public building and I have been noticing that our nation's flag is at half mast more often than not. Heise sees this coming. He doesn't flinch. Death stops most kindly for Mr. Heise.
In the acknowledgments, Heise says, "My father: these poems are you"; consequently, the collection invites a hunch that readers are being dipped into a family funeral. A good portion of the book confirms suspicions and, with a chilling touch of familiar terror, takes us along on a tour of grief in general.
Heise accomplishes something that most poets should start envying today. He writes poems that stand alone and together with equal unity; like a symphony. While listening to the ghost music in Horror Vacui, a common whisper echoes words, phrases, rhymes, themes, and titles between poems. Themes build upon one another until we are actually, finally, buried with Heise and all of the other dead found in the ground.
At one point, Heise even takes on the 9/11 grief. I work in a public building and I have been noticing that our nation's flag is at half mast more often than not. Heise sees this coming. He doesn't flinch. Death stops most kindly for Mr. Heise.
Cormac McCarthy's Miltonian humdinger, No Country for Old Men. is a novel tuned to the key of poetry. McCarthy spares us no violent detail, but each incident brings closes in on an America that nightmares down every private rage. In this book, Anton Chigur is McCarthy's villain-prophet -- an Iago with a sawed-off shotgun.
As the book's hypnosis lulls the reader from one blood bath to another, we come to learn that the border we walk is not as simple as immigrant-citizen, criminal-cop, innocent-perpetrator, young-old. Instead, McCarthy gives us a world that devastates. His endless death moments respark the realization that impermanence lingers in every shadow.
In one section, Chigur offers life or death based upon the results of a coin toss. We learn, in these frightening moments, that he is the most honest character because he is true to the human condition. Things change in a fashion unknown. And, McCarthy might be reminding us, the unknown is the death-fear's cruelest parent.
As the book's hypnosis lulls the reader from one blood bath to another, we come to learn that the border we walk is not as simple as immigrant-citizen, criminal-cop, innocent-perpetrator, young-old. Instead, McCarthy gives us a world that devastates. His endless death moments respark the realization that impermanence lingers in every shadow.
In one section, Chigur offers life or death based upon the results of a coin toss. We learn, in these frightening moments, that he is the most honest character because he is true to the human condition. Things change in a fashion unknown. And, McCarthy might be reminding us, the unknown is the death-fear's cruelest parent.
