No Confession, No Mass

by Jennifer Perrine

Overview

Whether exploring the porous borders between sin and virtue or examining the lives of saints and mystics to find the human experiences in stories of the divine, the poems in No Confession, No Mass move toward restoration and reunion.

Jennifer Perrine's poems ask what healing might be possible in the face of sexual and gendered violence worldwide-in New Delhi, in Steubenville, in Juárez, and in neighborhoods and homes never named in the news. The book reflects on our own complicity in violence, "not confessing, but unearthing" former selves who were brutal and brutalized-and treating them with compassion. As the poems work through these seeming paradoxes, they also find joy, celebrating transformations and second chances, whether after the failure of a marriage, the return of a reluctant soldier from war, or the everyday passage of time.

Through the play of language in received forms-abecedarian, sonnet, ballad, ghazal, villanelle, ballade-and in free verse buzzing with assonance, alliteration, and rhyme, these poems sing their resistance to violence in all its forms.

Jennifer Perrine is an associate professor of English and directs the Women's and Gender Studies program at Drake University. Perrine is the author of In the Human Zoo, recipient of the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, and The Body Is No Machine, winner of the Devil's Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803277236
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	12/01/2015
Series:	The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
Pages:	82
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Perrine is an associate professor of English and directs the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Drake University. Perrine is the author of In the Human Zoo, recipient of the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, and The Body Is No Machine, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

I.

Invocation: [Saint] Genevieve

The Mother, the Girl, the Mirror That Speaks

To Chant Back the Summer

Humility | Pride

For the Lone Man at the Violence Prevention Center

Embarrassment: from baraço (halter)

Envy | Kindness

After My Mother’s Death, I Feel Nothing

II.

Invocation: [Saint] Euphrosyne

A Theory of Violence

The Divorcée’s Fable

Song of the Bystander

Piblokto

A Theory of Violence

’Tis of Thee

Greed | Charity

Mobility

Patience | Wrath

A Theory of Violence

III.

Invocation: The Blessed Girl, after Her Visions and Vows

Self-Portrait as Francis Bacon

Letter to Half a Lifetime Ago

Love Song with Condemned Building

Lust

Call Me

Lust | Chastity

Yoke

Wild Child (Slight Return)

I Would Rather Die a Thousand Deaths

Ode to the Motorcycle

Dead Letter

IV.

Invocation: [Saint] Pharaïldis

Pastoral for Our Uncharted Territories

Fishwife

Temperance | Gluttony

The Mystic Speaks of Attachment

Confidence Game

Wow and Flutter

Diligence | Sloth

Elegy for My Morbid Curiosity

Happiness: from hap (fortune, luck)

Coronal

Seconds

Editorial Reviews

“No Confession, No Mass is lyrical, inventive, and full of surprises, offering us fresh ways of seeing old stories. The music is a delight throughout—agile and apt—language enjoying itself! Jennifer Perrine writes: ‘and returned her whole, startled raw, launched her back into the world.’ This is what fine poetry can do—and No Confession, No Mass does it.”—Ellen Bass, author of Like a Beggar

Ellen Bass