One Body: Poems

by Margaret Gibson

One Body is Margaret Gibson’s most intimate collection of poems to date. Written as if to honor the injunction “Work to simplify the heart,” the poems are direct, empathetic, and tender in their study of life and death. The thirteen poems of the opening sequence, as well as other poems throughout, look steadily at life and death until they are transparently “one body.” “Closer to death,” she writes, “I want great faith and great doubt.” Whether the focus is personal or social, Gibson has written the poems in this stunning collection “because I want to see / how the body goes still / how the mind, how the lens of the eye / magnifies to an emptiness / so deep, so flared wide / there is everywhere field and the Source / of field.” One Body is the work of a richly contemplative poet.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Margaret Gibson is the author of ten books of poems and one prose memoir. A native of Virginia, now a resident of Preston, Connecticut, she is a nationally and internationally recognized poet. She has received numerous honors, including the Connecticut Book Award and the Melville Kane Award, and her collection The Vigil was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry.

Reviews

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite of her stuff so far, but I will look forward to rereading before I can comment.