My Father's Hand Is a Mountain Range: Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781388743420)

Opening with an ode to the freckles on his father's hand, C. P. SHAFER's debut poetry collection takes the reader on a journey into the mountains of life and the wilds therein. From a catalog of sounds that his father makes while getting ready for work, to a retelling of Theseus which paints the ancient hero as a poster child for classic abandonment issues - each poem is a "saw-tooth landscape" that "unfolds before you / offering / what hasn't been mapped..." Just as in nature there is pain beneath all beauty, C.P. SHAFER's prose pushes up through the mire of suicides, break-ups, and the inevitable betrayals of the body to see passing birds as spilled ink, and fatherhood as a chance to transform the poison inside us into life. "Crush the fragile enough..." the poet speculates "...and the remnants become immovable, that's how mountains are made: cores bleeding to fill the cracks; deformities rising in a universe falling." My Father's Hand Is a Mountain Range is a parade of deformities that explore masculinity, mortality, and the slivers of light we might otherwise miss during our brief "bone-soaked waltz with rain."

Author: C. P. Shafer
ISBN-10: 1388743426
ISBN-13: 9781388743420
Publisher: Blurb
Language: English
Published: 03/19/2018
Pages: 76
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.24lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.21d