The White Fire of Time / Edition 1

by Ellen Hinsey

Overview

A stunning new work by a profound poetic talent.

In this exquisitely coherent new collection of poems, Ellen Hinsey explores the boundary between poetry and metaphysics, and the intimate bonds between morality and mortality. Drawing on philosophical and spiritual readings, The White Fire of Time displays a breadth of cultural knowledge and a deep understanding of the wisdom of the body. The poems in this book-length sequence are gorgeous, brooding, musical, elegant and serious. The work is composed in three sections: The World, meditations on the ordinary, the daily life of the body and its place in nature and time; The Temple, investigations into language and the ethical life; and The Celestial Ladder, in which poems trace the soul's spiraling journey through desire, love, grief and endurance. Each section mirrors the structure of the whole, with poems following specific forms, serving to create a symphonic rhythm in which details, metaphors and meanings build and interweave.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819565570
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	08/08/2002
Series:	Wesleyan Poetry Series
Pages:	104
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Ellen Hinsey has published four books of poems: The Illegal Age (Arc Publications, 2018), a Poetry Book Society Choice; Update on the Descent (Bloodaxe Books, 2009), a 2007 National Poetry Series Finalist; The White Fire of Time (Wesleyan UniversityPress, USA, 2002; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2003); and Cities of Memory (1996), winner of the Yale Younger Poets Award. She also edited and co-translated Tomas Venclova’s The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008). in 2017 Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova was published by Rochester UniversityPress/Boydell & Brewer and Mastering the Past: Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the Rise of Illiberalism by Telos Press. Her poems, essays and translations have appeared widely in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry Review, Poetry and The Irish Times. Her translations of contemporary French fiction and memoir are published with Riverhead/Penguin Books. Her other awards include a Berlin Prize Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a Lannan Foundation Award. She has lived in Paris since 1987, and teaches writing and literature at Skidmore College’s program and the French graduate school, the École Polytechnique.

Table of Contents

Part 1	The World	1
	Intermezzo	25
Part 2	The Temple	31
	Intermezzo	59
Part 3	The Celestial Ladder	63
	Notes	87

What People are Saying About This

Honor Moore

"The White Fire of Time is a cantata, a poem of praise, resonating with the Dante of The Divine Comedy and the Milton of Paradise Lost. The strengths of this collection are its immediacy and the care, precision and purity of its diction. It is rare that such lapidary language accrues such music."

Carolyn Forche

"This is one of the most intellectually and spiritually ennobling books I have encountered, reminiscent of the writings of the great works of cosmogony and mysticism. It is the work of a true poet, whose sense of line, cadence and tonality is unsurpassed among poets of her generation."
— Carolyn Forche, author of The Angel of History

From the Publisher

"This is one of the most intellectually and spiritually ennobling books I have encountered, reminiscent of the writings of the great works of cosmogony and mysticism. It is the work of a true poet, whose sense of line, cadence and tonality is unsurpassed among poets of her generation."—Carolyn Forché, author of The Angel of History

""This is one of the most intellectually and spiritually ennobling books I have encountered, reminiscent of the writings of the great works of cosmogony and mysticism. It is the work of a true poet, whose sense of line, cadence and tonality is unsurpassed among poets of her generation.""—Carolyn Forché, author of The Angel of History

""The White Fire of Time is a cantata, a poem of praise, resonating with the Dante of The Divine Comedy and the Milton of Paradise Lost. The strengths of this collection are its immediacy and the care, precision and purity of its diction. It is rare that such lapidary language accrues such music.""—Honor Moore, author of Darling

Editorial Reviews

"This is one of the most intellectually and spiritually ennobling books I have encountered, reminiscent of the writings of the great works of cosmogony and mysticism. It is the work of a true poet, whose sense of line, cadence and tonality is unsurpassed among poets of her generation."—Carolyn Forché, author of The Angel of History

""This is one of the most intellectually and spiritually ennobling books I have encountered, reminiscent of the writings of the great works of cosmogony and mysticism. It is the work of a true poet, whose sense of line, cadence and tonality is unsurpassed among poets of her generation.""—Carolyn Forché, author of The Angel of History

""The White Fire of Time is a cantata, a poem of praise, resonating with the Dante of The Divine Comedy and the Milton of Paradise Lost. The strengths of this collection are its immediacy and the care, precision and purity of its diction. It is rare that such lapidary language accrues such music.""—Honor Moore, author of Darling

From the Publisher