{"id":2657,"date":"2013-08-22T21:33:13","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T21:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=2657"},"modified":"2022-10-25T11:39:41","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T15:39:41","slug":"the-glimmering-room","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/the-glimmering-room\/","title":{"rendered":"The Glimmering Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″]\"Glimmering<\/a><\/p>\n

paper \u2022 92 pages \u2022 15.95
\nISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-884800-97-9<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a>
\n[\/column]<\/p>\n

The Glimmering Room<\/em><\/h1>\n

Cynthia Cruz<\/h2>\n

Cynthia Cruz’s second collection,\u00a0The Glimmering Room<\/em>, beckons readers down into the young speakers’ dark underworld, and because we are seduced by Cruz’s startling imagery and language rich with “Death’s outrageous music,” we follow willingly. The poems wander in and out of their own American wastelands\u2014strip malls, bus stations, state psychiatric hospitals, “the Starver’s Ward \/\/ With the other almost-girls”\u2014with a loneliness “so brutal \/ It is beautiful.” Peopled with “ambassadors from the Netherworld”\u2014the orphaned and abused, the lost and addicted\u2014Cruz leads us through this “traveling minstrel show \/ Called girlhood\u2014” which is at once tragic and magical.<\/p>\n

From \u201cStrange Gospels\u201d to stark, entrancing dispatches from inside the hospital walls, these poems give voice to the voiceless in the face of poverty, addiction, war, and consumerism. \u201cI am diseased with this \/ Recurring dream that is \/ My life,\u201d one speaker declares, and we are devastated not by a godless world, but by a world rife with the \u201cGod of gas station bathrooms \/ And of girls held hostage \/ Inside their own bedrooms,\u201d a God who \u201cdoes not keep\/ The demons back.\u201d Relentless in its descent into \u201cthe mind’s outrageous factory,” the book’s redemption lies not in pulling us back from the edge, but in its refusal to look away or to let us forget: \u201cmemory\/\/ That warm slop of honey, \/ seeping. No way to stop it \/ And its gorgeous hurricane of bees.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Star,” from The Glimmering Room<\/em>:<\/p>\n

In the homeless shelter-slash-\nGreyhound Station in Springfield,\nMass., the loneliest man and woman\nJust limped past me\n<\/pre>\n
En route to the shooting gallery
\nCalled the men’s bathroom.
\nDead, I think, but happy.And the world lives on
\nInside the TV set bolted above
\nThe plastic seats of the bus station:
\nGlue sniffing boys in Basra,
\nA UN supply truck
\nCarrying food and water, held up
\nAt gunpoint. And tanks plow
\nInto the burning city–Is it true, we are all passengers,
\nAnd this world a room
\nWe are traveling through?<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
About the Author<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 92 pages \u2022 15.95 ISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-884800-97-9 Add to Cart [\/column] The Glimmering Room Cynthia Cruz Cynthia Cruz’s second collection,\u00a0The Glimmering Room, beckons readers down into the young speakers’ dark underworld, and because we are seduced by Cruz’s startling imagery and language rich with “Death’s outrageous music,” we follow willingly. The poems wander […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2657","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2657","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2657"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18285,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2657\/revisions\/18285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}