logo

Front cover for Shadow-feast by Joan Houlihan

paper • 64 pages • 15.95
ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-08-2

Add to Cart

Shadow-feast

Joan Houlihan

Shadow-feast is a chronicle of dying—the awareness, denial, pain, and hope surrounding incurable illness, as well as the aftermath of grief as told from three points of view: Hers, His, and Theirs (the couple). The collection as a whole is a Kage-zen, or Shadow-feast, a traditional Japanese meal offered to the dead. However, here it is set out not for an absent beloved, but for the reader.

From Shadow-feast:

BREATH THEY COULDN’T catch, motion that fell
as a run of shadow on their window
folded into one wish. Time—what was that—
flung over mountains where sun could blink and waver it off.
Clouds muscled in to not let them see the bald sky lying.
The knife-cold privacy exposed a man, and from his window
no motion, just New England birch, stripped limbs in late light.

About the Author


  • “Shadow-feast, the deft, wrenching title of this collection, inspired by the enigmatic internationalist writer Lafcadio Hearn, provides one of many keys to experiencing the meticulous linguistic ‘ceremony’ and rich ‘repast’ of Joan Houlihan’s singular work. These are urgent and fiercely incorruptible lyrics where the unsettlingly oblique and surreal is juxtaposed against moments of lucid and visceral anguish: ‘We had married ourselves to a trance.’ And ‘When they came for him full-dressed / and somber, they lifted a body made lighter / by suffering, laid it into the rubber bag / then zipped it to the top of his head.’ Who writes with this kind of prescient confidence and startling lyricism besides Joan Houlihan? Emily Dickinson, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Harryette Mullen come to mind.”—Peter Covino
  • “COME TO THE WAIT and the sea/flexes sleek in the sun,” Joan Houlihan tells us, and we sense the subtle disruption of our expectations of normalcy. Her small imposition of the article ("the" wait) telegraphs that we’ve entered an alternative sense of time, one in which we've "come to," as if from the sleep of expected usage. Here, also, in form: this poem’s lines are split in two as if each next moment must be paused over, pondered, as one ponders any dangerous step forward into change. Form in this work, like time, does not operate in easy coherence with what we expect. We “come to” in each poem, awakened to the enormity that, at any instance, all may become nothing we expect, an awareness lived daily by those facing an encroaching death—an awareness performed in many formal shifts, as well as described in the voices of “hers,” “his,” and finally “theirs,” each deftly drawn, their images held from one another, yet only together do they offer a full sense of what it means to live through a loss. We find ourselves intuitively responding to every, even the least, “flexing” of form, suggesting both in shifts and in recurrences how the coming of a death offers this constancy: all will become foreign, all hopes and self-protective devices will be violated. Each image is spare and resonate, and will remain etched in this reader’s mind. “He will not move. At dawn birds come up,/and the smell of rain-eaten dirt.”—Rusty Morrison
  • "To say that Houlihan is a unique voice in American poetry is an understatement. The work is breathtakingly inventive and yet deeply humane. In the time when so many poets create linguistic fireworks that possess little, if any, emotive depth, Houlihan gives us a poetry of passion and lyric attentiveness that is rich in its textures, lyric tonalities, and rhythmic, memorable speech."—Ilya Kaminsky
  • "...The speaker avoids the ordinary and with perfect craft and words that behave just right, she creates new forms for loss — and loss is gradual here allowing the poems to track demise in the richness of its grain. Grief is unbelievable yet Houlihan has to believe and makes us handle it the way she handled the lathe, page by page. Critics compare her to Emily Dickinson and I think I know why. They each distill language and feeling to a crystalline state that never tells a lie. Reading Houlihan reminds me of why I first loved poetry." Read the full review.
  • "...a stunning poetry array on the death of her beloved...." Read the full review.
  • "...Houlihan’s language is stripped of all connective tissue, leaving minimal punctuation and deliberate use of idiosyncratic spacing to convey meaning...." Read the full review.
  • "Shadow-feast is a tour de force sheared of excess, breathtaking in its leaps, and thrilling in its sonic resonances. Joan Houlihan touches uncannily on the hidden pulse of experiencing her husband’s death. The perspectives that form the three sections, Hers, His, Theirs, evidence Houlihan’s ability to discern the distance from and proximity of each to each...." Read the full review.

Four Way Books

PO Box 535, Village Station
New York, New York 10014

Our Mission

Four Way Books is dedicated to producing and promoting excellent literary publications and to creating opportunities for writers of merit. We believe that the work of writers brings good to the world—understanding, empathy, curiosity, wisdom—and that if we can be the conduit for connecting writers and readers, for making a writer's life more meaningful by bringing validation to the artist and fine work to public attention, we are spending our days nobly.

Our Philosophy

Four Way Books seeks to please and expand poetry’s audience and to nurture the gifts of adult writers, spanning a wide range of geographic, cultural, and economic backgrounds. Our hope is to support our authors not only during the time we are publishing them but also throughout their writing careers by inviting them to participate in events, offering residency opportunities when possible, and making it known that our door is open to them. In addition to publishing excellent literary works, we provide our authors with the encouragement and support necessary for the longevity and success of careers in the arts. Well into its third decade, Four Way Books acquires and lovingly produces important, surprising, and potent works for readers, who consistently tell us they are glad we are here—eclectically, steadily, and passionately here.
Donate
(c) 2013 Four Way Books. Inc. All rights reserved.