{"id":16944,"date":"2022-07-11T14:28:04","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T18:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=16944"},"modified":"2025-03-19T12:06:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T16:06:53","slug":"the-certain-body","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/the-certain-body\/","title":{"rendered":"The Certain Body"},"content":{"rendered":"

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paper \u2022 64 pages \u2022 $17.95
ISBN: 978-1-954245-30-3
eISBN: 978-1-954245-38-9
September 2022 \u2022 Poetry<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a>
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The Certain Body<\/em><\/h1>\n

Julia Guez<\/h2>\n

Reviewed in\u00a0RHINO Poetry<\/em><\/a><\/h5>\n
Reviewed in Ocean State Review<\/em><\/a><\/h5>\n

In the long limbo of post-viral syndrome, Julia Guez aptly frames the recursive paralysis of pandemic rhetoric, whose seeming transitions always arrive at the same uncertainty: \u201cand then what \/ and then \/ what, what \/ then.\u201d The Certain Body<\/em> captures life with illness\u2014how the body moves through disease and rests in the liminal space of otherness. Following the speaker through a harrowing and disorienting SARS-Cov-2 infection, readers witness the poet\u2019s gradual refortification as Guez traverses all facets of sickness: its mercies, its pleasures, its gratitudes, its reliefs, its gorgeousnesses. Probing, sharp poems centering an awareness of human ephemerality answer the words of Viktor Shklovsky: \u201cAnd art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony.\u201d In \u201cIf Indeed I Am Ill,\u201d Guez writes, \u201cThese sonatas, these scores, tell me \/ what of them will last when everything falls away\u2014\u201d Through these lyric expressions, Guez shows us not just how art can heal but how healing is art, a modality of acceptance, the meaning in the process, a mosaic of imperfections that creates and embraces what is.<\/p>\n

“Meditation at Callicoon,” from\u00a0The Certain Body<\/em><\/p>\n

More and more night pretends
it isn\u2019t spring. What to
make of the daffodils then?
Hyacinth here and there, wind
and rain? So many birds.
Of course they won\u2019t stay
long. None of this will.
Not the night, the cold,
the city full of swallows.
Not the bridges and rivers,
the music that they make.
Not the sea, no god
born of the sea foam.
Not even mothers and sons
this would be unbearable without.
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\nAbout the Author<\/a><\/pre>\n
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[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 64 pages \u2022 $17.95ISBN: 978-1-954245-30-3eISBN: 978-1-954245-38-9September 2022 \u2022 Poetry Add to Cart[\/column] [column col=”3\/4″] The Certain Body Julia Guez Reviewed in\u00a0RHINO Poetry Reviewed in Ocean State Review In the long limbo of post-viral syndrome, Julia Guez aptly frames the recursive paralysis of pandemic rhetoric, whose seeming transitions always arrive at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-16944","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16944"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20734,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16944\/revisions\/20734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}