Glean
by JOSHUA KRYAH
Winner of the 2005 NIGHTBOAT POETRY PRIZE
Chosen by Donald Revell
Finalist for the 2007 Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers
Glean, a reference to the gathering of grain after harvest, explores the appalling trust implicit in any act of faith—that prayer may not elicit a response. Spare and evocative, the collection struggles with a language at odds with itself. How do we write about an absence that can never be fully possessed or known, an absence that may be all we ever glimpse of the divine? When does spirituality become more real than its pursuit? Moving between doubt and vulnerability, the body and its unresolved spiritual fate, these poems dedicate themselves to the pursuit of redemption.
ISBN 0-9767185-4-5
91 pages
$14.95
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Click below to read poems from Glean
"My Easter"
"Oh Taste and See"
Praise for JOSHUA KRYAH:
After we've reaped the whirlwind, what remains to glean? This debut approaches the question and its quiet apocalypse not desperately but,against all precedent, lovingly. And such approach is amply rewarded. In the hollow places of our day, Kryah finds not emptiness, but an echoing sound of wings. In the waste spaces, he finds a spark just now coming alight—for warmth, not burning. Crazy as it may sound, in Glean we have the love poetry of a terrible aftermath we need not, thanks to Kryah, fear after all."
—Donald Revell
"In these tight and resonant lyrics, logic, precision, and affection coalesce. Opening with the self as a winged fruit, Kryah goes on to find more and more facets of being that negotiate body, name, and world in a way that brings out both their reverence and their rigor. Like prayer that needs nothing to pray to, these poems continually open, enlarging our view."
—Cole Swensen
About JOSHUA KRYAH
Joshua Kryah was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is presently a Schaeffer Fellow in poetry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His poems have appeared in Chelsea, Field, The Iowa Review, and Verse, among other journals. Glean is his first collection of poetry. For additional information, please go to joshuakryah.com.
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