Strange Hymn
Regular price
€18.99
A01=Carlene Kucharczyk
Absence
Abstract
Abstract themes
Ancient stories
Animal bodies
Art
Artistic reflection
Artistry
Author_Carlene Kucharczyk
Burn
Category=DC
Category=FXL
Conceptual
Craftsmanship
Definitive knowledge
Disarray
Dynamic form
Dynamic use of form
Ephemeral lives
Ephemerality
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
Floral imagery
Forgetting
Forgotten memories
Form
Fragility
Glass house
Glass metaphor
Grief
Historical context
History
Hotel
Hotel imagery
Humanity
Impersonal past
Insightful
Iterations
Lament
Lessons
Light imagery
Lights
Lost grandeur
Love
Lyrical journey
Manipulating time
Mary
Memory
Mirror
Momentary beauty
Morality
Morning Glory
Musings
Myth
Mythical context
Mythical creatures
Narrative
Narrative arc
Nature
Nature reflection
Nature's beauty
Nature’s beauty
Odysseus
Orthodontics
Palace
Palace imagery
Perception
Physical loss
Physicality
Poetic craft
Poetic insight
Reflection
Rejoicing
Self
Self-awareness
Self-reflection
Silence
Silence exploration
Sirens
Slipping away
Small beauties
Small lights
Song
Space
Symbolism
Temporal themes
Time
Time-space
Transformative
Transience
Understanding
Product details
- ISBN 9781625348647
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 04 Apr 2025
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
“I’ll tell you everything I know. Though there might not be much to tell,” confesses the speaker in Strange Hymn by Carlene Kucharczyk, in a meticulously crafted lyrical journey exploring morality and humanity. The poems here grapple with understanding physical loss: “I wanted / to know once and definitively our animal bodies / were not all we were. It is shameful to be this fragile.” They also engage with the more abstract slipping away of memory and time: “Since I was born, I have been forgetting. Forgetting what I have wanted to remember.” Kucharczyk’s insightful poems blur the lines between history and myth, love and grief, song and silence.
Caught between lamenting the passage of time and rejoicing in small beauties, she writes, “I tell you, I wish we could stay here longer / in this hotel of lost grandeur, this palace of interesting disarray, / and stay here with these pieces of the impersonal past / that have somehow not yet outlasted their small lights.” Each moment reflects on our ephemeral lives from musings on art and nature to reflections on the self, asking “Is a mirror a sort of glass house? / And, is there a way to see ourselves besides through the glass?”
As readers traverse this collection, they learn how the body sings, the many iterations of Mary, what sirens truly think of Odysseus, how a Morning Glory unfurls, and lessons in orthodontics, but most importantly, how to live with absence. Kucharczyk is a master of manipulating time and space through her dynamic use of form, creating a narrative that begs, “After I’m gone, don’t bury my body— / Burn it, and turn it into song.”
Caught between lamenting the passage of time and rejoicing in small beauties, she writes, “I tell you, I wish we could stay here longer / in this hotel of lost grandeur, this palace of interesting disarray, / and stay here with these pieces of the impersonal past / that have somehow not yet outlasted their small lights.” Each moment reflects on our ephemeral lives from musings on art and nature to reflections on the self, asking “Is a mirror a sort of glass house? / And, is there a way to see ourselves besides through the glass?”
As readers traverse this collection, they learn how the body sings, the many iterations of Mary, what sirens truly think of Odysseus, how a Morning Glory unfurls, and lessons in orthodontics, but most importantly, how to live with absence. Kucharczyk is a master of manipulating time and space through her dynamic use of form, creating a narrative that begs, “After I’m gone, don’t bury my body— / Burn it, and turn it into song.”
Carlene Kucharczyk’s writing has appeared in literary journals such as Poetry Northwest, Mid-American Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Green Mountains Review, and Conduit, and has received a Pushcart nomination.
