He Final Collection

Claude Before Time and Space: Poems by Claudia Emerson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Claude Before Space and Time is Claudia Emerson's final complete collection, in which, as the jacket says, she "quietly but fiercely explores the themes of mortality and time." These poems are heartbreakingly beautiful, and unsparing. I found it impossible to read these and not be aware they were written in her last months. The juxtaposition of such poems as "On Leaving the Body to Science," and "Birth Narrative" reminds me of not just the cycle of life and the inevitability of death, but the connections between death and birth, a connection made here in story, in narrative, in poetry. I am also reminded me of how Claudia and I met in graduate school at UNC Greensboro, and the gift of finding each other at the University of Mary Washington, and the last message she sent me, a month before she died.

She left too soon.

Highly recommended.



View all my reviews