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One of the fixtures on the New York City poetry performance
scene this season has been poet Veronica Golos, who
has been debuting A BELL BURIED DEEP.
In the volume, Co-Winner of the 16th Annual Nicholas
Roerich Poetry Prize, (distributed by Consortium Distributors)
Golos explores the complexities of faith, desire, myth
and redemption in our time.
In her re-envisioned biblical voices of Sa'rai and
Ha'gar and those of Sarah and Harriet under slavery,
and their descendents, Ms. Golos creates an ambitious,
seamless collection of intense lyric, meditative, and
narrative poems.
Veronica Golos, who lives in New York City, comes to
the task with some impressive credentials. She teaches
for the 92nd St Y, Poets House, and Poets & Writers.
From 1999-2003, she was the Artistic Director for Literary
Programs at the 14th St Y. She was awarded a three-month
artist residency this past summer at the Wurlitzer Foundation,
in Taos, New Mexico.
Here is an example from the volume, a grand book in
theme and style, which Golos developed through two years
of research on the Genesis story, and on slavery in
the U.S.
THE CASTING OF STONES
She is raw, as if a great hand whittled her down to
bone.
She gleams beneath her eyes; she is full with the death
of desire,
with the absence of useless moons. She is the conundrum
of what is filled, her emptiness beyond our ken; she
holds
nothing; her skin, a sieve. She is gone beyond
us, where dust is water and water, sprinkling sand.
We have walked with our sandals upon her; we have leaned
into her void. We have called out her name
in the desert; we have found twelve polished stones.
The volume carries with it a strong endosrement from
Alice Ostriker, who notes "A Bell Buried Deep is
a confluence of three sacred streams: the
sensuous body which is ours and the world's, the passion
for justice which craves to undo the oppressions and
cruelties we inherit from the past, and the spiritual
imagination that is able to generate hope...(her) poetry
is lucid, alive, with the specifics of intellectual
and emotional experience, and resonant as a bell."
Adds Patricia Smith: "These poems, tender and
jolting. . . are concise and lyrical, simply stunning,
and no one who reads these painful, liberating musings
will close this volume unchanged. Veronica Golos, whose
body of work shines with quiet brilliance, crafts these
dual voices with strength and unflinching focus. . ."
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