paper • 84 pages • 15.95
ISBN-13: 978-1-935536-35-2
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Read an Interview with Joy Katz for The Paris Review
All You Do Is Perceive
Joy Katz
The Latin root of perceive means “to seize entirely,” and that’s exactly what these poems do. Here there is “no door / just the edge of an infinite pour” into motherhood, cities old and new, and the histories that comprise us. The centerpiece of the book is a series of poems revolving around a new mother, a mix of peril and ecstasy that suffuses the entire book, whether the speaker is beholding her adopted baby, a President finishing supper before declaring war, or an ambulance that “dazzles like a cocktail ring.”
“All You Do Is Perceive”:
I was given a city, with coffee and sunlight. "The coin-purse smell of the subway," I wrote. In the mornings policemen would stand, lightstruck and pleasured, over trays of danish. Mornings I wrote and workmen raised up their nets. Hallelujah the brick, the debris! I was given a city! The city got between me and God. I was given a house. The curtains breathed over wide sills. There was a leaf in the middle of the floor, I loved the crispness of the leaf. I loved the privacy of sills. The sills sailed, I fell into the sills. The sills got between me and God. I was given a mud hut. The walls curved to meet the ceiling like a tongue curves to make a word. I was given God, with salt and sweet together. I was given a piece of meat. I loved the flesh. I was given bread only. I was given only water. I loved the coolness of the water. The water got between me and the feast. I had an empty plate and there was the color of it. I cannot even describe the color of it. I was given a cell with a window. There was a certain light at evening. I was given nothing but air, and the air dazzled.
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