Overview

Dead Language chronicles the journey of a daughter searching for her mother in the underworld of grief. As the poet wanders, she encounters memories as well as features of the imagined underworlds of Homer, Vergil, Dante, Hieronymous Bosch, Lewis Carroll and others. These form a psychological landscape of mixed emotions: disorientation, guilt, gratitude, regret, longing, depression, resignation. The poet struggles to find a language adequate to comprehend and ""compose"" the mother, a Latin teacher who refused to use the term ""dead language,"" insisting the ancient tongue lived on. Finally, the poet emerges from the underworld, acknowledging that her mother, like the dead language, is embedded in the etymology of the living.

Full Product Details

9798888389904

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Jeanne Emmons has published four previous collections of poetry: The Red Canoe (Finishing Line Press); The Glove of the World, winner of the Backwaters Press Reader's Choice Award; Baseball Nights and DDT (Pecan Grove Press); and Rootbound, winner of the New Rivers Press Minnesota Voices Competition. She received her PhD in English from The University of Texas. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Scholar, Carolina Quarterly, Louisiana Literature, Poet Lore; Prairie Schooner, River Styx, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, Xavier Review, and many other journals. She is the former poetry editor of The Briar Cliff Review. She lives on a lake in South Dakota with her husband and cat.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available