{"product_id":"shadow-architect-9781556592775","title":"Shadow Architect","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Emily Warn is one tough poet. . . . She not only takes on God but also juggles the hot coals of memory and wrestles her way to an honest spiritual life.\"--\u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWarn has created a serious meditation on Jewish prayer and cosmogony, in lyrical prose and in accessible verse, a book that belongs not only on poetry shelves, but amid other Judaica and books of prose and verse on religious themes. --\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e...a sincere exploration of spirituality and the line between the abstract and the concrete... --\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHow are words made, and how do they derive power? These are the questions at the core of Emily Warn's \u003ci\u003eShadow Architect\u003c\/i\u003e, organized around the twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet. Mystics have seen that alphabet as a key to divine intent, since God brought the world into being through speech. But Warn takes a poet's view rather than a theologian's: she sees the alphabet's power to reveal the nature of invention, and the limits of language and knowledge. \u003ci\u003eShadow Architect\u003c\/i\u003e channels this power not only through word but through image: each poem begins with an illumination of a Hebrew letter. Within the set boundaries of this alphabet, Warn generates a rich polyphony, uniting her own distinctly American poetics with the language of sacred texts and commentaries.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe result is an alluring, postmodernist take on how language means: an architecture not only of shadows, but of \"correspondences, analogies, clues, \/ binaries, metaphors, keys.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTo invent the alef-beit, \u003cbr\u003edecipher the grammar of crows, \u003cbr\u003eread a tangle of bare branches\u003cbr\u003ewith vowels of the last leaves\u003cbr\u003escrawling their jittery speech\u003cbr\u003eon the sky's pale page.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEmily Warn\u003c\/b\u003e, author of two previous books of poetry, lives in Seattle and Chicago, where she is the editor of the Poetry Foundation's website.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Copper Canyon Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/01\/2008\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781556592775\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 139\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.55lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.80h x 5.90w x 0.50d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/16\/2008 pg. 35\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/15\/2008 pg. 71\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Emily Warn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42487240032437,"sku":"9781556592775","price":12.75,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_0cd621d5-83b2-4c46-a3dc-ce9d52edb5db.jpg?v=1667314487","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/shadow-architect-9781556592775","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}