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THE STOREHOUSES OF THE SNOW

THE STOREHOUSES OF THE SNOW

$15.00Price

ISBN: 978-0-9839975-5-9

Pub Date: Spring 2012

Pages: 76


By Phillip Memmer


Like the biblical tales these poems often echo, Philip Memmer’s The Storehouses of the Snow is a book of fire and hope, of light and blood. Consisting of three different kinds of poems—psalms, parables and dreams—this collection continues the search for meaning he began in his earlier books. The inventiveness with which Memmer revisits these age-old forms surprises and entertains, while also subtly reinforcing the impossibility of certainty: in these pages, the kingdom of heaven might be a garden or a mass grave; the god who calls it home is by turns an absent business partner, a burning house, the poet’s own new-born child. And the narrator’s own position on his subject bears a similar honest fluidity . . . sometimes the cynic, sometimes the seeker, Memmer brings his timeless questions firmly into the present.

    In The Storehouses of the Snow, Philip Memmer—with a storyteller’s gift for intrigue, wit and compassion—gives us imaginative and compelling variations based on well-known Biblical passages and phrases. These poems are graceful, heady, ironic, full of feeling and a Job-like questioning intelligence. An impressive follow-up to his prize-winning Lucifer.

    —Peter Makuck, author of Long Lens: New & Selected Poems


    Bitter and brilliant, ardent and persistent, The Storehouses of the Snow is a book to read—no fooling—alongside the Book of Job. Every poem here made me catch my breath in astonishment at Philip Memmer’s bold imagination and the sacred relentlessness of his quest.

    —Alicia Ostriker, author of The Book of Seventy


    In his delightfully audacious fourth book, Philip Memmer addresses a deity who is “always ceasing / to be, and then ceasing / to cease to be.” In Psalms that fuse contemporary language and wit with scriptural gesture, Memmer knits a sweater for God and presents Him with new “by-laws” for their unsatisfactory relationship; in recast biblical stories and invented parables, he foregrounds God’s absence and sanctioned destructions. But the poet’s disappointment with the one he calls Father is tempered by wistfulness and wisdom; even before the book’s surprising final turn, he offers this: “you must / find the kingdom empty, / then make it yours.”

    —Martha Collins, author of Blue Front


    Philip Memmer is the author of three previous books of poems, including Lucifer: A Hagiography, winner of the 2008 Idaho Prize for Poetry; Threat of Pleasure, winner of the 2008 Adirondack Literary Award for Poetry; and Sweetheart, Baby, Darling (Word Press, 2004). His work has appeared in such journals as Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Mid-American Review and Poetry London, and in several anthologies, including 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day and Don’t Leave Hungry: Fifty Years of Southern Poetry Review. He lives in upstate New York.

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