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The Reinvention of the Human Hand
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The Reinvention of the Human Hand Paperback - 2010

by Paul Vermeersch


From the publisher

Paul Vermeersch's new poems give a present-day voice to primitive song, and restore to us a dawn-time severity that cuts through modern evasions. They go beyond sophistication to reveal the passionate and suffering animal within. The Reinvention of the Human Hand is a poetry of the human body's experience, of a primal being that struggles to assert itself, or perhaps just survive, in a world of metals, plastics, electronics. Here is the most far-reaching work yet by the acclaimed author of Burn, The Fat Kid, and Between the Walls. Vermeersch has always gone in search of understanding. Now his discoveries speak of a human world exhausted by its divorce from an animal past, terrified of retreating into early places it never truly left, astonished by the forgotten possibilities disclosed there.

Details

  • Title The Reinvention of the Human Hand
  • Author Paul Vermeersch
  • Binding Paperback
  • Pages 88
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher McClelland & Stewart
  • Date 2010-03-16
  • Features Price on Product - Canadian, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9780771087431 / 0771087438
  • Weight 0.25 lbs (0.11 kg)
  • Dimensions 8 x 5.4 x 0.3 in (20.32 x 13.72 x 0.76 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: Canadian
  • Dewey Decimal Code 811.6

Excerpt

the painted beasts of lascaux

Their discovery has been a kind of homecoming, too.
Part of you has been here before, germinal, hidden.
A painted hand resting on the stone, a molecule,
a memory of muscled, brawling bulls entombed
deep within, their horns goring the darkness
locked in the rock of ages. These yellow ochre horses
were born too long before they could be anything
but horses, before they could be centaurs, before
they could be starships. Remember, these herds
are the same on these walls as they were in their fi elds,
the same as they are in your mind. Listen.
Their hoof beats trampling this ancestral earth
are still the drums that drive the song in your blood,
the abiding chant of the hundred billion dead
who came before you. Their distant voices vanished
into your voice, deepening it. Their song the song
that’s been snarled in your heart – breaking it,
trying to pound its way free – for your entire life.

Media reviews

"Vermeersch is one of Canada's best young poets. [His poems] explore the tension between the natural world and the artifice of our society, and the collision between the public sphere and the secret corners of our private lives."
Vancouver Province

About the author

Paul Vermeersch is the author of three previous collections of poetry and the editor of The I.V. Lounge Reader and The Al Purdy A-frame Anthology. His writing has appeared frequently in the Globe and Mail and been featured on CBC Radio. His poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies in Canada, the United States and Europe. He lives in Toronto, teaches at Sheridan College, and is the poetry editor for Insomniac Press.
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The Reinvention of the Human Hand
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The Reinvention of the Human Hand

by Vermeersch, Paul

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The Reinvention of the Human Hand
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The Reinvention of the Human Hand

by Vermeersch, Paul

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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The Reinvention of the Human Hand
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

The Reinvention of the Human Hand

by Paul Vermeersch

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  • Paperback
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Paperback
ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780771087431 / 0771087438
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