The Collector of Bodies

by Diane Glancy

Overview

A 1994 trip to Syria and Jordan as an Arts America Speaker for the United States Information Agency began the group of poems for The Collector of Bodies. The manuscript stayed in a file until the Civil War began in Syria, March 18, 2011, the author's 70th birthday. The poems were retrieved, and the manuscript continued. Glancy wrote as an observer--as someone who had talked to the students in the universities--who had experienced a foreboding of what was ahead for Syria, especially after listening to the unrest of the students. In the bright sunlight, as they walked toward her, smiling, she felt an inexplicable point of grief. She heard the desire of the people to be free. Later, following the uprising of civil war on the news, she knew she was seeing the price the Syrians would pay for that desire. A visit to a foreign country leaves part of oneself in that place. But something in return is taken. This collection of poems explores the ""something that is taken"" with implications for the Christian believer and the issues involved. What can be done in a world full of refugees? Is there anything to do other than stand back and watch? ""To trace the complexities of being an alien in a foreign country and to also consider the strange intimacy of the story we all inhabit: this is what Diane Glancy asks us to do. She attends to this fractured, uneasy, impossible balance, moving between the Middle East and her own story, and rises up to the Divine the question of what to do in the face of unbearable human brutality and human tenderness.""  --Anne M. Doe Overstreet, author of Delicate Machinery Suspended Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. Her 2014-15 books are Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education, University of Nebraska Press (creative nonfiction), Report to the Department of the Interior, University of New Mexico Press (poetry), and three novels, Uprising of Goats (the voices of 10 Biblical women), One of Us (the church a murderer left in his wake), and Ironic Witness (a minister's wife finds herself in hell). Among her awards are two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Minnesota Book Award, and an American Book Award.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781532603006
Publisher:	Resource Publications
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. Her 2014-15 books are Fort Marion Prisoners and the Trauma of Native Education, University of Nebraska Press (creative nonfiction), Report to the Department of the Interior, University of New Mexico Press (poetry), and three novels, Uprising of Goats (the voices of 10 Biblical women), One of Us (the church a murderer left in his wake), and Ironic Witness (a minister's wife finds herself in hell). Among her awards are two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Minnesota Book Award, and an American Book Award.

Table of Contents

Part 1 A Journey into Syria and Jordan 1

Notebook of a Trip 3

Damascus, March 24 5

Down to the Simplest Wire in the Human Voice 6

The University at Lattakia 9

Can You Imagine Hearing No Stories? 10

Blue 12

Despondency 13

Presentiment 14

Monday, March 28, Private Dinner 15

Ebla, Syria 16

Departure to Another Place 17

Bedouin Girl Reads about Transportation in Russia 18

Ding-y Bat Attackment 20

Irrigation 21

Histronics 22

A Blueprint of Heroics 25

The Leaving 26

At the Poetry House, Tucson 27

Jerney 28

Near Tucson in the Desert 29

Instructures 30

North Dakota, March 4th 31

Necessary Departures 32

Moab 33

The Whole of What Story 34

Roof 35

Tough Cookie 36

You Wild and Turbulent Riding a Big Machine 40

Restorytive 41

Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire 42

Weaponry 43

The Heroics of History 44

Post Multiculturalism 45

Damascus Square 47

Inviolate 48

Pulp 49

An End Note to Part One 50

Part 2 The Civil War in Syria 51

The Watch 53

The Day We Refuse to Bow-3/18/11 54

The Wind at the End of the World 55

Scorched Earth 57

The Storm Wind Engulfing 58

The Collector of Bodies in Houla 59

Now Homs Again 61

Pieces of the News (1) 62

Loading Zone for Interior Traffic 64

In a dream I climbed the stairs 65

The Cup He Cried For 66

Unknown No. 14 67

Wired 68

Prayer for Syria 71

ISIS 73

The Loneliest Road 75

Pieces of the News (2) 77

Until Nothing Is Left 78

Residue 80

Afterword 81

Acknowledgments 84

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"To trace the complexities of being an alien in a foreign country and to also consider the strange intimacy of the story we all inhabit: this is what Diane Glancy asks us to do. She attends to this fractured, uneasy, impossible balance, moving between the Middle East and her own story, and rises up to the Divine the question of what to do in the face of unbearable human brutality and human tenderness." 
—Anne M. Doe Overstreet, author of Delicate Machinery Suspended

Editorial Reviews

"To trace the complexities of being an alien in a foreign country and to also consider the strange intimacy of the story we all inhabit: this is what Diane Glancy asks us to do. She attends to this fractured, uneasy, impossible balance, moving between the Middle East and her own story, and rises up to the Divine the question of what to do in the face of unbearable human brutality and human tenderness." 
—Anne M. Doe Overstreet, author of Delicate Machinery Suspended

From the Publisher

2017-02-24
Glancy (Trigger Dance, 2015, etc.) contemplates history and culture in this new collection of poems. The impetus for this book, as Glancy explains early on, was a trip she took in spring 1994 through Syria and Jordan on behalf of the U.S. Information Agency. A cultural ambassador of sorts for the U.S., she confronted the depth of the history that surrounded her: "Standing at the ruins of Ebla in Syria, there was an older old than any of the history I knew in America." The author's travels in the Levant forced her to consider the disconnect she felt between the Holy Land of the Christian Bible—a place so revered by Americans—and the modern Muslim nations that Americans regard with such suspicion. These Syria and Jordan poems sit side by side with others set in North Dakota, Arizona, New Hampshire, and elsewhere in the U.S., in which Glancy examines her personal history as well as her own cultural background as a Native American. As the poet writes, "You know how seeing another country / makes you see your own / and you know how America's eye is always on itself." The second section of the book revisits the Syria of recent years, ruminating on how the holy desert of Glancy's travels has become a conflagration of violence and inhumanity. In these poems, she mourns the loss of the people and places she saw in 1994, wondering what has become of them: "I thought of the dyer of blue cloth in Damascus / … / What happened to the patterns and jars of blue? / The maker of them?" The work moves back and forth between narrative verse poems and contemplative prose poems, tackling complex ideas from multiple angles. The result is a book that is both analytical and lyrically satisfying, a profound meditation on the nature of nationhood, history, and the narratives readers allow themselves to live in. The question Glancy poses in the title poem is as true of America as it is of Syria: "What can be trusted to be true / in the complexities of a country at war with itself?" A thoughtful and often beautiful volume of poetry that explores the Middle East and America.

Kirkus Reviews