Synopsis:

Ned Balbo's Sandeen Prize-winning collection of poetry seeks a voice for contemporary and historical figures as they face the ecstasy and grief of love. In these assured and powerful poems, Balbo's confidence in lyric, narrative, and dramatic forms is always evident: lovers whirl in Dante's circle, saints suffer for their faith, and characters from Hitchcock films are caught in traps of their own making. With energy and insight, Balbo gives us Alice Liddell's last word on Lewis Carroll's infatuation, a Victorian heroine who uncovers a wax museum's hidden crimes, and a bestiary where courtship rituals are savage and redemptive. Lives of the Sleepers explores the connections of men and women across the centuries and interrogates those patterns that always reassert themselves. These sleepers are joined in a dialogue that transcends any one era. The joy of their connection and the grief of their separation also reflect the history of our own age. 

Book Excerpt:

Desire: A Bestiary [Honey Bee]
 
Surrounded and caressed,  honey
presented for her feast,
a queen will rest, stiff hairs groomed
 
by her retinue of drones
who close in through the hum
gently, a swarm of many wings--
 
But come the sudden impulse,
what is kindness? Nothing else:
hive forsaken, fast in flight, she'll seek
 
new company, lovers dispersed
over a greater realm,
hovering through consummations
 
accomplished in mid-air...
                                                     But one
moment spent too near
costs each his life when she tears out
 
what made him dear.  

 

Eurydice in Darkness
 
I didn't think that you'd descend so soon
Into this world beneath the world, these caves
Of ice, cold light of asphodel, this dress
Itself a pale light floating over waters
As I pass: first, Fire; Forgetfulness,
Then fallen shadows. In such light, devotion
Seems too pure, too blinded in its power
Not to destroy us both. And yet, such faith
Has brought you here....The song completes itself.
I follow, head bowed, as if I believe
That we'll transcend this darkness if we climb
Faster and far enough, that all your words,
Melodious sounds, can save us? If you turn,
You'll see me as I am: already lost.  

 

 Terzanelle with Lines from Bhartrihari
          Renunciation of worldly attachment
          is only the talk of scholars,
          whose mouths are wordy with wisdom.
 
Renouncing, finally, all the world offers,
You put your hair back up. I watch you dress--
But isn't this only "the talk of scholars,"
 
Mouths "wordy with wisdom," who impress
Each other, but not us, with vague abstractions?
I touch your hair, gently, watching you dress,
 
Clasp pressed beside breast-shadow, all your actions
Well-timed and precise. Lovers grown tired
Of one another--not us--seek abstractions
 
Sometimes, reasons why they might feel scared,
Or trapped, or simply restless, all the nights,
So well-timed and precise, leaving them tired
 
Instead of touched with light, twin satellites
That separate at last. You find your skirt
Adrift beneath a chair, near crushed, the night's
 
Gains changed to loss. You look a little hurt,
Renouncing, finally, all the world offers,
More pain or pleasure, smoothing down your skirt,
Remembering, at most, the talk of scholars.
 

After Hitchcock [Melanie's Ascent As Metaphor]

Their explanations always seem absurd:
Thick men (except for Ingrid) filling suits 
That look inflammable, who drone on, glazed
Eyes fixed on some far point beyond the storm
Of their own rhetoric. We turn away
When Hitchcock asks and answers once again,
What's madness? through the voice of one who knows, 
Some tensed psychiatrist...And yet, transfixed,
We watch as Melanie, flashlight in hand,
Begins her slow ascent late in a film
Where madness goes unmentioned, as she stops
Before the door she fears, then steps inside,
Glance frozen upward: shattered roof, blue sky--
Exploding from the bed, a thousand wings.  

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Topics/Categories:

Arts and Literature, Blank Verse, Catholicism, eros, Faith, Film, Formal Poetry, free verse, Love, myth, narrative poetry, Nature, Popular Culture

Genre:

General Poetry

Type of Work:

Poetry

Awards:

Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize ForeWord magazine Book of the Year in Poetry

Purchase From:

amazon.com
University of Notre Dame Press

Original Publish Date:

April 30, 2005

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