HANDLESS DOLL
Sometimes a single word
can grant me the will to live.
Do you know how old I am?
Do you find my legs beautiful?
Come, touch the clustered pale grapes
of my hair.
On the day my midnight blood
breaks the skin
the whole world will become blue.
...baffling, funny, surreal and, quite often, disorientingly moving.
Jared Bland
The poems of Object Permanence communicate the secret intensity of a world peopled by objects. The author and the figures—burning dolls, prophesying heads, terrified porcelain roosters, pontificating door-knockers—are crammed into a house overlooking Sintra, Portugal. An exposé of the domestic chambers of human experience, these poems find terror and familiarity reside together.
David B. Goldstein is a critic, poet, food writer, and Associate Professor at York University in Toronto. His publications include Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare’s England, the poetry collections Object Permanence (UDP), Lost Originals and Laws of Rest, and two co-edited essay collections.
Praise for previous work
Adam Sol
To make a David Goldstein poem: put a small library together. Include some rabbinic commentary, some literary theory, some Shakespeare and some transcriptions of cellphone conversations. Add a dash of longing and a dollop of irreverent wit. Stir vigorously. Never remove from heat.
Chapbook
Saddle-Stitched. 32 pp, 4.5 x 6.5 in
Publication Date: August 01 2015
Distribution: Direct Only