{"product_id":"the-earliest-witnesses-paperback-1","title":"The Earliest Witnesses - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eG. C. Waldrep\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the poems of The Earliest Witnesses, witnesses need a place to begin-they spiral off from a walk, a church, an orchard, to go into deeper meditation about faith, earth, restraint, desire, and violence. Waldrep's seventh collection begins where his prior collection, feast gently, left off: \"This \/ is how the witness ends: touch, withdraw; touch again,\" according to the opening poem. The status of witnesses is never constant and never settled in this book: sometimes, witnesses \"foster,\" \"touch,\" and \"stain\" the places they inhabit; other times, they befriend, or document, or think. Sometimes, witnesses forget themselves-in questions of blame and responsibility-and sometimes they feel forgotten and unknown. If these are poems of witness, then they are also testators to the craft of seeing: \"Can you see this,\" the ophthalmologist in \"A Mystic's Guide to Arches\" asks over and over again. Here, sight facilitates and impedes desire; it colludes with language itself. \"She said, When you say pear, I see p-e-a-r for a second before I see, in my mind's eye, a pear,\" Waldrep carefully records in \"[West Stow Orchard Poem (II)].\" The desire-poems in The Earliest Witnesses want the thing itself, its image of the mind, and the language that transmutes both thing and image into song.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 130\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.31 x 8.5 x 5.5 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e January 01, 2021\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47581441458397,"sku":"9781946482488","price":23.58,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0811\/9867\/8237\/files\/8rcNRBrtof9781946482488_7b3de3a6-2ea8-4663-bdbb-69cdecbb6af5.webp?v=1773562183","url":"https:\/\/handfulofbooks.com\/products\/the-earliest-witnesses-paperback-1","provider":"Handful of Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}