Hardcover
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
if one asks for a sign
must one accept what’s given?
Ethernan, an Irish missionary in the seventh century, retreated to the Caiplie Caves on the eastern coast of Scotland to consider life as a hermit. In The Caiplie Caves, Karen Solie’s fifth collection of poems, short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize, Solie inhabits a figure inspired by Ethernan, a man torn between the communal and the contemplative. His story is remarkable for the mysticism embedded in the ordinary; as Solie writes in her preface, Ethernan is not known for supernatural feats, but “is said to have survived for a very long time on bread and water.”
Interwoven with the voice of this figure are poems whose subjects orbit the physical location of the caves and join the sharply contemporary to the mythic past: the fall of a coal-fired power station; a “druid shouting astrology” outside a liquor store, putting “the Ambien in ambience”; seabirds “frontloaded with military tech”; the dichotomous nature of the stinging nettle.
These are meditations on the crisis of time and change, on class, power, and belief. Above all, these are ambitious and exhilarating poems from one of today’s most gifted poetic voices.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780374117962 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 07/07/2020 |
| Pages: | 144 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface xiii
"In this foggy, dispute-ridden landscape" 1
I
The North 5
Sauchope Links Caravan Park 6
Crail Autumn 8
A Plenitude 9
NO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W 11
Having abandoned his mission … 12
Efforts are made to dissuade him … 13
Evidence of his own cult in Pictland … 14
"Ethernan" likely derived from the Latin … 17
The Desert Fathers 19
"When Solitude Was a Problem, I Had No Solitude" 21
Tentsmuir Forest 23
A Miscalculation 24
The Spies 26
Mercenaries Know There's Always Room for Specialists in the Market 28
The Meridian 30
Whose Deaths Were Recorded Officially as Casualties of "The Battle of May Island" 31
Song 34
II
NO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W 37
He remembers a friend … 38
Like Cormac Ua Liatháin, he sought … 41
Hostilities were inevitable among the four peoples … 43
Now blood on his lip … 45
Tomorrow, for sure, he will make a start … 47
A vision 48
He reexamines his practice 49
A visitation 52
He enquires of the silence 54
An Enthusiast 55
From The Invertebrate Fauna of the Firth of Forth, Part 2, 1881 57
The Shags, Whose Conservation Status Is "of Least Concern" 60
"Goodbye to Cockenzie Power Station, a Cathedral to Coal" 61
A Trawlerman 64
She Is Buried on the West Braes 66
White Strangers 68
Origin Story 69
Kentigern and the Robin 73
To the Extent a Tradition Can Be Said to Be Developed; It Is More Accurate to Say It Can Be Clothed in Different Forms 75
An Unexpected Encounter with He Who Has Been Left Alone to His Perils 77
A Retreat 78
Song 79
III
Song 83
A Lesson 84
The Intercessors 85
Crail Spring 87
The Sharing Economy 88
Time Away with the Error 89
Two Chapters on Ancient Stones 90
Ancient Remedies with Contemporary Applications Currently in Development 92
56.1833° N, 2.5667° W 94
The Isle of May lies just outside the western boundary … 95
Its paved road, which has all the appearance … 97
Having once dwelt at Caiplie, "place of horses"… 99
In a purposeful adoption of an ancient burial site … 101
You Can't Go Back 103
Stinging Nettle Appreciation 105
The Hermits 106
Clarity 108
Notes 113
Acknowledgements 117