{"product_id":"the-most-charming-creatures-poems-9781770416611","title":"The Most Charming Creatures: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Gary Barwin\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: ECW Press\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: ECW Press\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Canadian\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith uncanny wit, inventive beauty, and numinous surprise, \u003ci\u003eThe Most Charming Creatures\u003c\/i\u003e explores the contemporary and its language, considering our wonder, sorrow, bewilderment, anxiety, and tenderness. While these poems energize and connect and \"turn the paren- \/ theses inside out so that \/ we mean everything,\" they are also alive to the alluring complicity of language and its duplicity and deceptions. \"This is the way the world ends \/ Not with a bang but \/ while we watch.\" \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA follow-up to the award-winning author's acclaimed selected poems, this new collection continues Barwin's examination of the possibilities of the poem: a celebration, a story, an investigation, a riff, a word machine, a parable, a transformation. But what are the \"most charming creatures\" of the title? In 1862, scientific illustrator Ernst Haeckel termed radiolarians (ancient single-celled organisms with mineral skeletons) \"the most charming creatures,\" but here Barwin turns the microscope around to consider something just as strange and mysterious: language, our culture, and the self. From microorganisms, onion rings, grief, and Gerard Manley Hopkins to beetles, neoliberalism, sandwiches, Martin Luther, and stand-up comedy, he offers: \"it's a miracle that we've survived \/ it's a miracle that we've survived at all.\"","brand":"Atlantic Books","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46318382416023,"sku":"9781770416611","price":2137.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9781770416611.webp?v=1767712389","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/the-most-charming-creatures-poems-9781770416611","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}