What do you think?
Rate this book
The History of the Growth of Heaven
Signed, inscribed and dated by author on page after table of contents. Gray cloth covers, slight foxing on page edge. Silver dust jacket with blue decoration on top. Dust jacket in protective cover. One of the most interesting inscriptions I have ever seen. It includes a "menu" of supernatural creatures. Stated first printing. Tight binding with clean and unmarked interior pages. The gutter between inside front cover and endpaper is cracked a little but binding is still tight.
- GenresPoetry
73 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
12 people want to read
About the author
Andrei Codrescu
161 books151 followersAndrei Codrescu is a poet, novelist, essayist, and NPR commentator. His many books include Whatever Gets You through the Night, The Postmodern Dada Guide, and The Poetry Lesson. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 12, 2015
This is one of those amazing surrealist books in which you cannot figure out how the author picked each word, but they are painstakingly perfect words. If you want to read poetry that is equal parts inspiring and obscure, try this book out.
March 27, 2021
rain blows my eyelashes upwards toward
the spot of light which is my face
which is being circled by a dove.
i am lying under a piano
and your beautiful white feet are on my naked belly.
the rain of the Lord is in my heart.
- - -
Your pubic hair is the apex of a lovely
triangle rising through each day of my life
to complete a pyramid being secretly built
in my blood.
The mythical import of this construct
is then placed in the perspective of what the dead
are building under the streams, in what
imitations of us are being plotted by governments
in the cheaper materials, in rawhide
and in silver telephones
- - -
What some mistake for me meditating
is a giant stupor with a black hood
sitting crossed legged at the end of May, counting
the days till Christmas.
Stupor, flat and simple, the overture
to the large thoughts of the Rectory cow
underfed but happy in her
buzzard shadow
January 23, 2022
Oh I believe that all of us real poets string pickers
all of you great geniuses of my changing crystals
all of you and all beasts
have been growing hungry from a fast in us.
Now now here is the presence of mind
needed to stand up in the refrigerator and turn on the light
spouting from the butter, eerie eggs
of mind presence snowing near the gardens.
Dear God, Cauliflower & Broccoli are so Beautiful Together!
And the frozen ducks in the cracked cellophane pushing
a slice of pizza into the side of a clam can!
And the cheese singing!
Oh I believe that all of us
are ready!
* * *
my body, spill-proof bu not quite,
is full of grinning groceries, my liver
dreams of paté. my heart
makes the soup red my head
stuffs itself with birds. even
my fingernails look good in jello.
the trick is to bring in each
dish at the right time in the dim
candlelight. the trick
is to surprise your guest with the ease
with which you delve into
yourself
* * *
i was dead and i wanted peace
then i was peaceful and not quite dead yet
then i was in my clothes
and i took them off and then
there was too much light
and night fell
then i wanted to talk to somebody
and i spoke ecstatically
and i was answered on time in every language
in a beautiful way
but i felt unloved and everyone
came to love me
still there is something running
and i can't catch it
i am always behind
* * *
dancers strapped to canoes is
what the morning brings. they are tied
to a perpetual dance.
hooded folks in lighthouses
count on their fingers as the day
get brighter. everywhere
dancing is either law
or crime. i have no particular
taste for this world. i am looking
for an utterly still completely
dead hotel.
* * *
It's opium we need not truth.
Unless we are and we are morally pinned to the wall
with a gold stake. I am
pinned to your forehead, Karl Marx, like a
butterfly to a shirt.
The one way out is through blood, your
blood. Here, surrounded by the serenity
and transparency of opium
we sail toward the island of your blood.
When we stop we experience night.
As we go on the light of day bathes us.
* * *
It's all in order that you may
wake up beating your Coca Cola against
the paint on the wall
while the birches outside are beating
up your girlfriend.
March tunes on the window.
It's all in order that you may
harmonize with the sky inside your dilated
pupils blinking at the clouds
and at the pain of her wild
tits banging on the copper bowl outside the door.
It's all so that you may suddenly wake up
on the other side of the needle.
It's all in the order of the day.
* * *
visitación! visitación!
i had both my hands on the red telephone!
maría! maría! mother of god!
the cracks in the ceiling are lines in the palm!
my fingers are sweating with blessings!
the honey of the apocalypse is upon your soft body!
maría of the motelroom ceiling!
stars of the red telephone!
* * *
rain blows my eyelashes upwards toward
the spot of light which is my face
which is being circled by a dove.
i am lying under a piano
and your beautiful white feet are on my naked belly.
the rain of the Lord is in my heart.
* * *
My next book will have a poem for each
Saint dropped by the Church,
33 poems in all,
the longest one for Saint George
who was the longest man in the world when added
to the end of his lance.
I will put a little cross by each poem
meaning "here lies",
a very deceptive move since no one
will lie in there,
no one, not even the Monk
who will be out thinking of girls
what are poems?
* * *
I want to write down the life
that could be my life if I insisted
if I pulled up a corner of the cloth to let the lady
with the groceries
have a look at my cock,
flash of storks running errands for God.
I want to perfect a partial view
through a hole in my cloth,
a slanted recording, a window hangup,
not mindful of the undistorted door,
of the remarkable way.
I ought to repair my life with the grease of Poems:
the bourgeois at war with the monk.
Oh, the volume of the devil's lease!
* * *
I hate photographs,
those square paper Judases of the world,
the fakers of love's image of all things.
They show your parents where the frogs of doom
are standing under the heavenly flour,
they picture grassy slopes
where the bugs of accident whirr twisted
in the flaws of the world.
It is weird,
this violence of particulars
against the unity of being
* * *
Flemish style, late 17th century:
the Virgin holds a gun
not the baby.
Artist, unknown.
* * *
What some mistake for me meditating
is a giant stupor with a black hood
sitting crossed legged at the end of May, counting
the days till Christmas.
Stupor, flat and simple, the overture
to the large thoughts of the Rectory cow
underfed but happy in her
buzzard shadow
* * *
lit candles.
In the exact middle of the Father's Prayer
it switched rhythm and recited itself upside down.
The whole thing recited upside down
invoked the devil.
The two halves of the prayer
as they stood back to back, ready for a duel,
gave me a mysterious feeling,
the candles posed for breath
like birth, the Spirit
of Romance
* * *
the spirit of this room is dead. it was a very good spirit.
it kept the tea warm and it put me to sleep
it fastened our love and it took good care of the heart.
it shone over the lower east side.
1 A.M: things are unveiled, we are unprotected at night
and i want to plant an insane bomb in my own liver.
so i will never meet my edges again.
if only this disgust would leave me alone.
* * *
i've always looked for joy as a pretext to write
but could not or would not
fall face down upon that knot of pain which seems
to make even the simplest things
a complete and frightening mystery.
this way i have avoided being torn
by the terrific closeness with that heart-shaped weapon
which makes us die. i have left out
important fragments of my life. i've taken only
the juice out of the squalor. i have avoided
loving more than i could love.
* * *
and here where a new life
sprouts into a mild
anxiety from the orient
your words, like the scales on a dying fish,
flash into sunset
* * *
death covers me with fine dust.
i love used fat books, they are
like used fat bodies coming out of sleep
covered with fingerprints and shiny
snail trails.
i wish to read the way i love:
jumping from mirror to mirror like a drop of oil
farther and farther from my death.
but go gives us fat books and fat bodies
to use for different reasons
and less a metaphor i cannot say
what haunts me
* * *
the supreme test of one's poem
is in the bathtub standing up naked hands
above the head like a gothic christ
and if the picture in the mirror is of a fat
belly swaying between the forks of a black grin
it's still OK! but no poem
* * *
so few things to write about
when there is a sky full of the electrical lights of san francisco
stilling the lights in your head from the left
and the sea some two feet away filling the other ear
with the sounds of all the things you ever wanted to say.
the wind the horse thief takes whatever is left over
from that music i cherish inside winelike in the airtight heart.
there is nothing here now.
the whining after the unplugging of the world.
all of you great geniuses of my changing crystals
all of you and all beasts
have been growing hungry from a fast in us.
Now now here is the presence of mind
needed to stand up in the refrigerator and turn on the light
spouting from the butter, eerie eggs
of mind presence snowing near the gardens.
Dear God, Cauliflower & Broccoli are so Beautiful Together!
And the frozen ducks in the cracked cellophane pushing
a slice of pizza into the side of a clam can!
And the cheese singing!
Oh I believe that all of us
are ready!
- Us, pg. 1
* * *
my body, spill-proof bu not quite,
is full of grinning groceries, my liver
dreams of paté. my heart
makes the soup red my head
stuffs itself with birds. even
my fingernails look good in jello.
the trick is to bring in each
dish at the right time in the dim
candlelight. the trick
is to surprise your guest with the ease
with which you delve into
yourself
- tête-à-tête, pg. 5
* * *
i was dead and i wanted peace
then i was peaceful and not quite dead yet
then i was in my clothes
and i took them off and then
there was too much light
and night fell
then i wanted to talk to somebody
and i spoke ecstatically
and i was answered on time in every language
in a beautiful way
but i felt unloved and everyone
came to love me
still there is something running
and i can't catch it
i am always behind
- a grammar, pg. 7
* * *
dancers strapped to canoes is
what the morning brings. they are tied
to a perpetual dance.
hooded folks in lighthouses
count on their fingers as the day
get brighter. everywhere
dancing is either law
or crime. i have no particular
taste for this world. i am looking
for an utterly still completely
dead hotel.
- sea sickness, pg. 12
* * *
It's opium we need not truth.
Unless we are and we are morally pinned to the wall
with a gold stake. I am
pinned to your forehead, Karl Marx, like a
butterfly to a shirt.
The one way out is through blood, your
blood. Here, surrounded by the serenity
and transparency of opium
we sail toward the island of your blood.
When we stop we experience night.
As we go on the light of day bathes us.
- Manifesto, pg. 17
* * *
It's all in order that you may
wake up beating your Coca Cola against
the paint on the wall
while the birches outside are beating
up your girlfriend.
March tunes on the window.
It's all in order that you may
harmonize with the sky inside your dilated
pupils blinking at the clouds
and at the pain of her wild
tits banging on the copper bowl outside the door.
It's all so that you may suddenly wake up
on the other side of the needle.
It's all in the order of the day.
- The Order of a Spring Day, pg. 23
* * *
visitación! visitación!
i had both my hands on the red telephone!
maría! maría! mother of god!
the cracks in the ceiling are lines in the palm!
my fingers are sweating with blessings!
the honey of the apocalypse is upon your soft body!
maría of the motelroom ceiling!
stars of the red telephone!
- october 17, pg. 25
* * *
rain blows my eyelashes upwards toward
the spot of light which is my face
which is being circled by a dove.
i am lying under a piano
and your beautiful white feet are on my naked belly.
the rain of the Lord is in my heart.
- october 19, pg. 27
* * *
My next book will have a poem for each
Saint dropped by the Church,
33 poems in all,
the longest one for Saint George
who was the longest man in the world when added
to the end of his lance.
I will put a little cross by each poem
meaning "here lies",
a very deceptive move since no one
will lie in there,
no one, not even the Monk
who will be out thinking of girls
what are poems?
- My Next Book, pg. 33
* * *
I want to write down the life
that could be my life if I insisted
if I pulled up a corner of the cloth to let the lady
with the groceries
have a look at my cock,
flash of storks running errands for God.
I want to perfect a partial view
through a hole in my cloth,
a slanted recording, a window hangup,
not mindful of the undistorted door,
of the remarkable way.
I ought to repair my life with the grease of Poems:
the bourgeois at war with the monk.
Oh, the volume of the devil's lease!
- More about Poems, pg. 35
* * *
I hate photographs,
those square paper Judases of the world,
the fakers of love's image of all things.
They show your parents where the frogs of doom
are standing under the heavenly flour,
they picture grassy slopes
where the bugs of accident whirr twisted
in the flaws of the world.
It is weird,
this violence of particulars
against the unity of being
- About Photography, pg. 38
* * *
Flemish style, late 17th century:
the Virgin holds a gun
not the baby.
Artist, unknown.
- The First Icon with Gun, pg. 41
* * *
What some mistake for me meditating
is a giant stupor with a black hood
sitting crossed legged at the end of May, counting
the days till Christmas.
Stupor, flat and simple, the overture
to the large thoughts of the Rectory cow
underfed but happy in her
buzzard shadow
- Stupor at the End of May, pg. 44
* * *
lit candles.
In the exact middle of the Father's Prayer
it switched rhythm and recited itself upside down.
The whole thing recited upside down
invoked the devil.
The two halves of the prayer
as they stood back to back, ready for a duel,
gave me a mysterious feeling,
the candles posed for breath
like birth, the Spirit
of Romance
- The Spirit of Romance, pg. 47
* * *
the spirit of this room is dead. it was a very good spirit.
it kept the tea warm and it put me to sleep
it fastened our love and it took good care of the heart.
it shone over the lower east side.
1 A.M: things are unveiled, we are unprotected at night
and i want to plant an insane bomb in my own liver.
so i will never meet my edges again.
if only this disgust would leave me alone.
- the good spirit, pg. 53
* * *
i've always looked for joy as a pretext to write
but could not or would not
fall face down upon that knot of pain which seems
to make even the simplest things
a complete and frightening mystery.
this way i have avoided being torn
by the terrific closeness with that heart-shaped weapon
which makes us die. i have left out
important fragments of my life. i've taken only
the juice out of the squalor. i have avoided
loving more than i could love.
- why write, pg. 57
* * *
and here where a new life
sprouts into a mild
anxiety from the orient
your words, like the scales on a dying fish,
flash into sunset
- eugenio montale in california, pg. 58
* * *
death covers me with fine dust.
i love used fat books, they are
like used fat bodies coming out of sleep
covered with fingerprints and shiny
snail trails.
i wish to read the way i love:
jumping from mirror to mirror like a drop of oil
farther and farther from my death.
but go gives us fat books and fat bodies
to use for different reasons
and less a metaphor i cannot say
what haunts me
- books, pg. 63
* * *
the supreme test of one's poem
is in the bathtub standing up naked hands
above the head like a gothic christ
and if the picture in the mirror is of a fat
belly swaying between the forks of a black grin
it's still OK! but no poem
- poem, pg. 66
* * *
so few things to write about
when there is a sky full of the electrical lights of san francisco
stilling the lights in your head from the left
and the sea some two feet away filling the other ear
with the sounds of all the things you ever wanted to say.
the wind the horse thief takes whatever is left over
from that music i cherish inside winelike in the airtight heart.
there is nothing here now.
the whining after the unplugging of the world.
- late night, san francisco, pg. 71
October 1, 2021
I love Codrescu. His sharp wit, unerring ear for rhythm and wordplay, and relentless, unsparing cantankerousness is refreshing in a genre characterized by unthinking privilege, blandness, and pretentious navel-gazing.
February 16, 2015
Another interesting collection of poems by Codrescu.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews