Product Description

"Moving and mysterious, the poems in Ford's first collection possess the veiled brilliance of stained glass windows seen at night."
--New York Times Book Review

"A promising first collection."
--Library Journal

Poet Katie Ford's debut collection confronts God in a language as shifting and ecstatic as divine encounter.

This comes out of folklore.
Invented because tenderness at times
must be written in. There was a woman.
There was a cross. But in fact
they have hung him too high
to be touched.
--from "A Woman Wipes the Face of Jesus"

"Rarely is poetry of such extremity--extremity of experience, extremity of spiritual practice and insight--presented in a style which manages to both horrify and still break the heart, and, if not soothe, then at least find those reaches in the reader where there is compassion so open it awaits no recompense. Here is a poetry of witnessing--theological, emotional, intellectual--a private end to a century's horrors, a reminder that not all things begin again, and that from some reaches of experience instruction shines far less than the beauty of the survivor's report."
--Jorie Graham

"Katie Ford is young, vibrant, evocative and brilliant. Her images are powerful, her insights into life are stunning."
--John Shelby Spong, author of A New Christianity for a New World

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #651194 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 72 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781555973742
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Rarely is poetry of such extremity—extremity of experience, extremity of spiritual practice and insight—presented in a style which manages to both horrify, and still break the heart, and, if not soothe, then at least find those reaches in the reader where there is compassion so open it awaits no recompense. Here is a poetry of witnessing—theological, emotional, intellectual—a private end to a century's horrors, a reminder that not all things begin again, and that from some reaches of experience instruction shines far less than the beauty of the survivor's report." —Jorie Graham
-- Review

Review

About the Author
Katie Ford is the author of Deposition and a chapbook, Storm. Individual poems have appeared in the Paris Review, the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Seneca Review, and Poets & Writers. She has received awards and grants from the Academy of American Poets and the PEN American Center and is the poetry editor of the New Orleans Review. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, the novelist Josh Emmons.

Customer Reviews

A Stunning Debut
Katie Ford's "Deposition" is a work of immediate beauty and pain that heralds an important new voice in poetry. In its exploration of faith and its absence, and of commitment and detachment, and of the ways by which the human body falls in and out of the numen's range, it establishes a model of question and response and punctuating silence that is as provocative as it is illuminating. These are wonderful poems. Rarely have I had so much occasion to look up from the page and see the world in sharper focus. Read this book and be unsettled and everything isn't going to be okay and this too is how to move forward.

A lovely book of poetry
As a woman going through a loss of faith and religion I feel very connected to this book. I feel a connection of a soul level to a religion and faith that I no longer can carry or believe in, yet it still consumes so much of who I am and how I relate to the world.

I really identified with so much of this work. I am glad to have it.

i liked this one too...
i especially like the "station" poems that depicted christ's crucifiction..." last breath in snowfall," i remember fondly...this one i heard about also in poets and writers...the images she uses are striking and she is very creative with language...