Contrary Visions

Contrary Visions

"It is in a Blakean sense of Contraries that Carolyn Kreiter-Kurylo titles her first book Contrary Visions... The people in a number of these poems are deaf or blind or infirm, but the poet knows the world is no less various and intense when the eye is lightless or the ear mute, and she intuits how the senses may complement and supplement each other... Kreiter-Kurylo's poems proclaim the beauty and abundance of this world of memory, history, art and music, of outcasts and exemplars and the fragile, natural economies they inhabit and as they do so, quietly they celebrate themselves. They are their own best source of wonder...."-Peter Klappert, George Mason University. Award Winner, Yale Series of Younger Poets. "The concern in these poems with the visual, with how artists see, is obvious and praiseworthy, but what strikes me even more forcefully is the variety of tones and sound effects that are available to this poet, whose ear is as keen as her eye. There is plenty of intelligent pleasure in this collection."- Henry Taylor, Pulitzer Prize Winner.

  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Preface
  • I. Contrary Visions
    • Contrary Visions in the Gallery, White on White
    • Donna Bruna
    • From the Cloister, Saint-Rémy
    • Crows over the Fields of Auvers
    • Nude Descending in All Directions
    • Painting Poppies near Arles
    • In the Bois de Vincennes, Paris
    • Other Possibilities
    • Coventry Cathedral
    • The Replica
    • The Mathematical Bridge, Cambridge
    • Touching a Stained-Glass Window in Gloucester Cathedral
    • The Peasant Woman above Tarifa
    • From a Café Window, Tangier
    • 20th Century Studio Scene
    • Lately I Have Been Too Wrapped Up
  • II. Rituals
    • Rituals
    • The Enchantress
    • Fire
    • The Waters of Bath
    • In the Hills of Les Baux
    • Earth Mothers
    • In the Plaza of America, Seville
    • Spell of Moon and Maple
    • A Deaf Woman Longs to Be among the Waters
    • Take This on Authority
  • III. Gifts
    • Baiting My Hook, I Try Again
    • Apples
    • The Aura
    • The Crèche Dolls
    • What You Hear in a Studio
    • To Walk Out on Three Musicians
    • Forgive Me, But This Is Just a Smear of Purple
    • Dream: Catching the Air
    • The Blind Woman, 1967
    • The Concertos
    • Touch
    • A Former Teacher Said It Is Not Easy
    • Proctoscopic Humiliation
    • At the Lawn Party
    • Music of the Hands
    • Sam's Accident
    • For a Franciscan Brother
    • I Don't Know Why I Wake Up Angry
    • Homeless on Independence Avenue
    • The Visiting Poet, Washington, D.C.
    • The Tidal Basin Holds Time Still
    • Gifts
    • Mountains

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