The Fast of Thoth, Pudding House Press, 25 pp., 2002
$5.00
The Fast of Thoth – Thoth was the god of scribes and writing and invented the Egyptian calendar. In this unique chapbook, each poem takes its cue from a calendar image for that month. “November” is based on a Famous Shipwrecks calendar for that month in 1975, when an overloaded Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a storm. “August” conjures the illusions created by a calendar of stereograms. “April” is based on a calendar of quilts. “February” is a Valentine poem using a National Geographic calendar photo by David Doubilet of a heart-shaped gyre of barracuda. “March’s” Weird Weather chronicles record-breaking tornadoes, avalanches, hailstorms, lightning strikes, snowfalls. “October” is from the Poets’ Year, which includes Keats’ Hallowe’en nativity, Poe’s croaking raven, Denise Levertov’s paeans to peace, Rimbaud’s smuggling of guns, Dylan Thomas preaching poetry’s “holy tongue,” e. e. cummings’ “non lectures,” Edna St. Vincent Millay’s prodigy, and Walt Whitman’s death masque. Truly a one-of-a kind book.
Description
The Fast of Thoth – Thoth was the god of scribes and writing and invented the Egyptian calendar. In this unique chapbook, each poem takes its cue from a calendar image for that month. “November” is based on a Famous Shipwrecks calendar for that month in 1975, when an overloaded Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a storm. “August” conjures the illusions created by a calendar of stereograms. “April” is based on a calendar of quilts. “February” is a Valentine poem using a National Geographic calendar photo by David Doubilet of a heart-shaped gyre of barracuda. “March’s” Weird Weather chronicles record-breaking tornadoes, avalanches, hailstorms, lightning strikes, snowfalls. “October” is from the Poets’ Year, which includes Keats’ Hallowe’en nativity, Poe’s croaking raven, Denise Levertov’s paeans to peace, Rimbaud’s smuggling of guns, Dylan Thomas preaching poetry’s “holy tongue,” e. e. cummings’ “non lectures,” Edna St. Vincent Millay’s prodigy, and Walt Whitman’s death masque. Truly a one-of-a kind book.
