Overview
With speakers set adrift in mysterious settingsāa motel in the middle of a white-sand desert, a house haunted by the ghost of a dead writer, an abandoned settlement high in the mountains, a city that might give way to riotous forestāBlack Observatory upends the world we think we know. Here, an accident with a squirrel proves the least bizarre moment of a day that is ordinary in outline only. The future is revealed in a list of odd crimes-to-be. And in a field of grasses, a narrator loses himself in a past and present āhuman conflagration / of desire and doubt,ā the āpath to a field of unraveling.ā
Unraveling lies at the heart of these poems. Murray picks at the frayed edges of everyday life, spinning new threads and weaving an uncanny and at times unnerving tapestry in its place. He arranges and rearranges images until the mundane becomes distorted: a cloud āstretches and coils and becomes an intestine / embracing the anxious protagonist,ā thoughts āleap from sagebrush / like jackrabbits into your high beams,ā a hot black coffee tastes ālike runoff from a glacier.ā In the process, our world emerges in surprising, disquieting relief.
Simultaneously comic and tragic, playful and deeply serious, Black Observatory is a singular debut collection, a portrait of reality in penumbra.
This book title, Black Observatory (Poems), ISBN: 9781639550265, by Christopher Brean Murray, published by Milkweed Editions (February 14, 2023) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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