{"product_id":"we-slept-the-animal-9781953252081","title":"We Slept the Animal","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): George Kalamaras\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: DOS Madres Press\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: DOS Madres Press\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Subjects \u0026amp; Themes - Animals \u0026amp; Nature\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMore than ten years in the making, George Kalamaras's We Slept the Animal: Letters from the American West, chronicles the author's years of friendship and correspondence with fellow poets, artists, and other friends. Kalamaras locates this epistolary sequence of poems in the West, where he has both lived and spent long periods of time revisiting during the last forty years, particularly Colorado and Montana. This book pays homage to its precursor, Richard Hugo's 31 Letters and 13 Dreams. The poems offer rich reflections of the living West, as well as an exploration of friendship and literary camaraderie. As in his previous collections, Kalamaras continues his ongoing project of \"seeing one in the other\"-giving us poems that explore the interaction of all things, particularly the interface of the human and natural world. Following his Surrealist forebears, he explores the complexity of language, with startling images and juxtapositions, as a vehicle for visionary poetics. These poems seek to connect our human impulses to the realms of the spiritual and the discursive. In the process, the poems honor the varieties of human and animal experience-mammals, marsupials, and the insect world, even probing the intelligence and \"vision\" that lie at the heart of molecules. We Slept the Animal also expresses an ars poetica, in part, in which Kalamaras maps the poetic process of his life of letters within the context of language, friendship, the geography of the West, and our animal selves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSAMPLE\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLetter to Hugo from Nowhere\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was the animal testicle you ate that spring\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewhen the herds swayed down from Glacier.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt brought you something low-slung through bunchgrass.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFirst, the snows thawed like a man without a drink, \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eall night with no ride and only the sweats.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen inside storms found rain could never heal.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI want to say it right, even if I might\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003emiss your grave with an occasional twelve-beat line.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eForm, I've heard, equals content. We want order. We crave.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTrains couple on the track. We're frayed, already\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003estuck in our words like dogs swollen\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003einto each other. They know no other\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eway. They whine. Howl. They're nowhere, \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eand so am I, mending snow-fence against weight.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e. . . \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"DOS Madres Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":45413932761239,"sku":"9781953252081","price":1528.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9781953252081.webp?v=1767919642","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/we-slept-the-animal-9781953252081","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}