{"product_id":"the-earliest-witnesses-gc-waldrep-9781946482488","title":"The Earliest Witnesses","description":"In 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e G. C. Waldrep\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 194648248X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781946482488\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Tupelo Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/31\/2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 130\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.38lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.31d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 01\/18\/2021","brand":"G. C. Waldrep","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44044962496767,"sku":"9781946482488","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_cd022237-3d48-40d3-bc18-29775beb9037.jpg?v=1684975936","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-earliest-witnesses-gc-waldrep-9781946482488","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}