How Heavy the Breath of God

by Sheryl St. Germain

These poems celebrate and consecrate the physical world, moving from exotic to familiar locations, from the jungles of Ecuador and Mayan ruins in Central America to the rural lands and flooding creeks of Texas.

Genres: Poetry

66 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1994

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

But the poems here are light in that heavy breath; reminding us that each breath is a connection to that mystery we all try to solve in our lifetime. A stunning and beautiful look at what it means to be in the here and now; even if that here and now was given in a way that was not planned for. Deep and insightful meditations.

[TM · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I return to again and again for its sense of being simultaneously away and yet coming home to oneself. Also for the sense of heaviness which I is noticeable to me as well when traveling in tropical zones.

[Sarah Lada · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of poetry is hot, heavy, wet, and sexy. It is also dark and desperate. When reading poetry, we are often aware that the poet is writing singly, alone. Sheryl St.Germain--or the narrator-- is even more alone. Throughout the first section of her book, she is "brought back to herself" in every sense that Albert Camus speaks of travel. She remains a fly on the wall of a foreign world and that foreign world is both South America and herself. She connects not with people, but with lonely, tragic, smart objects--the clothesline that "cuts/through the stomach of night/like a deep scar" and the empty blouse that "hangs on the line like something lost or forgotten." And for the sake of example, this book is thriving with similes; however, the descriptor of the similes are often simple and vague--"like God's shining", "as ugly as the ruins are beautiful", "like a thing almost not there". The second section of the book reflects on the disturbance of returning to your blood-land and how Peter Matthiessen describes it as regretful. This section of the book returns "home" to a dark and balmy inner-world where the poet interacts with certain lovers and where she muses upon the undertaker of her childhood. This section begins with my favorite poem of the book, "In the Garden of Eden" where she writes about the vegetarian vultures that would have never imagined that they would soon slice their beaks, for the sake of survival, through flesh.