Children with Enemies

Stuart Dischell

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780226498621
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

There is a gentleness in the midst of savagery in Stuart Dischell's fifth full-length collection of poetry. These poems are ever aware of the momentary grace of the present and the fleeting histories that precede the instants of time. Part elegist, part fabulist, part absurdist, Dischell writes at the edges of imagination, memory, and experience. By turns outwardly social and inwardly reflective, comic and remorseful, the beautifully crafted poems of Children with Enemies transfigure dread with a reluctant wisdom and come alive to the confusions and implications of what it means to be human.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Harmless Poem

Because You Have Seen It So

A Different Kind of Person

The Wharves

The Passages

Fragment

Song of the Compatriots

When a Child Asks about Angels

Things Are Changing for Johanna

“The Sun on Falling Waters Writes the Text”

In the Sequences of Traffic

Nothing about Dogs

The Mysteries of Aurora

Casualty Event

Memorial Day, Greensboro

Ring of Keys

A Visit to a Strange Land

His Name Means Handsome

Proclamation

The Best for Me

Why Poseidon Chose My Grandfather

Others Made It Back Over the Pyrenees

I Was Busy

My Uncle’s Sketchbook from the Cold War

Little Narcissus

A Message from the Herd

Another Picture of the Future

The Squash Man

Couplet on an Ancient Visage

Standing on Z

On the Day after My Birthday

My Famous Broken Heart

Beneath the Blast

Questions for the Mariner

Attic and Basement

Okay to Others

Future Girl

Without Sunglasses

What Begins in Eros Ends in Elegy

Evening in the Window (Parts I–IV)

Song of the Drunken Captain

If I Had Known You Were Listening

The Lives of My Friends

Translation from the Origins of Time

Notes

Acknowledgments

Some of these poems first appeared, sometimes in different versions or under other titles, in the following publications:

Agni: “Evening in the Window, Parts I–IV,” “Questions for the Mariner,” and “Translation from the Origins of Time”

Asheville Poetry Review: “Casualty Event” and “Why Poseidon Chose My Grandfather”

Barnstorm: “Without Sunglasses”

Birmingham Poetry Review: “Another Picture of the Future”

Cerise Press: “The Mysteries of Aurora”

Cortland Review: “Because You Have Seen ...