Forbidden City : Phoenix Poets - Gail Mazur

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Forbidden City

By: Gail Mazur

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Paperback | 31 March 2016 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
72 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.91 x 15.97 x 0.5

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from “Mount Fuji”

A draughtsman’s draughtsman, Hokusai at 70
thought he’d begun to grasp the structures

of birds and beasts, insects and fish, of the way
plants grow, hoped that by 90 he’d have
penetrated to their essential nature.

And more, by 100, I will have reached the stage
where every dot, every mark I make will be
alive. You always loved that resolve, you’d repeat

joyfully—Hokusai’s utterance of faith
in work’s possibilities, its reward, that,
at 130, he’d perhaps have learned to draw.

Gail Mazur’s poems in Forbidden City build an engaging meditative structure upon the elements of mortality and art, eloquently contemplating the relationship of art and life—and the dynamic possibilities of each in combination. At the collection’s heart is the poet’s long marriage to the artist Michael Mazur (1935–2009). A fascinating range of tone infuses the book—grieving, but clear-eyed rather than lugubrious, sometimes whimsical, even comical, and often exuberant. The note of pleasure, as in an old tradition enriched by transience, runs through the work, even in the final poem, “Grief,” where “our ravenous hold on the world” is a powerful central element.

Industry Reviews

"No one--and I mean no one--writes poems as chock full of such nuanced feeling as Gail Mazur. She is as good as it gets. Has the elegiac ever seemed so vibrant and full of breathing space as it does here? The poems in Forbidden City run light and true under hard losses. They are heroic in the best possible way, fully open to sorrow and fear but keeping their wits about them at all times. I love them, and envy their generous powers."--David Rivard
"With courageous disinterestedness, Mazur turns private particulars into universal images with a light poetic touch. We feel what she feels in the most ordinary objects and images that shine as human touchstones for our common longings and laments."
-- "Harvard Review Online"
"Mazur examines her response to desolation with unsparing meticulousness. The results are poems that expand our understanding of the consolation of nature, the miracles of art, and the power of imagination. . . . In its passion and invention, line by line, Forbidden City reveals Gail Mazur as an artist writing at the height of her powers." -- "On the Seawall"

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