Chantry by Elizabeth Treadwell

Description

ISBN: 9780925904409

Poetry: 94 pages

2004

Chantry is song. Chantry is song that exceeds song structure in all dimensions to become invocation and enchantment. From “the vessel without a cover” to “late silhouette in / blue” it refuses to be contained, as a book wants to live outside its covers. Sing this: “linger so this grace of grace,” yet sing it so that “the door cracks in so many different directions.” It is in these cracks, these interstices, that Elizabeth Treadwell finds and makes song, and the song exceeds and excels. Wordsworth defined poetry as spontaneous overflow of emotion, recollected in tranquility. Hear the overflow: “lovelove. all back-slaps and gummy smiles; free for honest mating?” and hear the invocation of a tranquility available for recollection and celebration: “inventing an alphabet / and feast their Beloved for awhile.” Throughout all, hear a language that irrepressibly invites the reader in, and creates a world worth the while, worth the song.