Signs, music Poems

Raymond Antrobus

Book - 2024

"Structured as a two-part sequence poem, Signs, Music explores the before and after of becoming a father with tenderness and care-the cognitive and emotional dissonances between the "hypothetical" and the "real" of fatherhood, the ways our own parents shape the parents we become, and how fraught with emotion, curiosity, and recollection this irreversible transition to fatherhood makes one's inner landscape. At once searching and bright, deeply rooted and buoyant, Raymond Antrobus's Signs, Music is a moving record of the changes and challenges encompassing new parenthood and the inevitable cycles of life, death, birth, renewal, and legacy-a testament to the joy, uncertainty, and incredible love that come wi...th bringing new life into the world"--

Saved in:
1 being processed
Coming Soon
Subjects
Genres
Poetry
Published
Portland, Oregon : Tin House 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Raymond Antrobus (author)
Other Authors
Polly Dunbar (illustrator)
Edition
First US edition
Physical Description
78 pages : illustrations, portrait ; 23 cm
ISBN
9781959030799
  • i. Towards Naming
  • ii. The New Father
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgements
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This tender offering from Antrobus (To Sweeten Bitter) delves into new fatherhood, with an ominous, deeply felt question hanging over it: "why have children/ when the world is ending?" The collection is split into the anticipation, and then the reality, of a new baby, as Antrobus lays bare the fears, challenges, and shortcomings every bit as fully as the wave of affection and awe a first child trails in its wake: "The sun is rising and there's nowhere to hide." Time is an encroaching presence, as is the apocalyptic political landscape into which the child is to be born: "New dads are marching/ at the climate change protest"; "Freedom, wrote Camille T. Dungy, is measured, in part, by/ the freedom to choose one's own name." There is also a sense of coming to terms, particularly after the baby is born, with the poet's own relationship to fathers and fatherhood ("I became fatherless at 26 and a father/ at 35"; "I thought about leaving/ thinking I need/ myself back need/ to stop the trigger/ of seeing my child/ get what I needed"), and with how one faces the world: "I broke up with righteousness. It sparkled on stage/ but annoyed everyone at the table." It's an unflinching and impactful look at the emotional dissonances of new parenthood. (Sept.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved