{"product_id":"the-most-charming-creatures-poems-9781770416611","title":"The Most Charming Creatures: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith uncanny wit, inventive beauty, and numinous surprise, \u003ci\u003eThe Most Charming Creatures\u003c\/i\u003e explores the contemporary and its language, considering our wonder, sorrow, bewilderment, anxiety, and tenderness. While these poems energize and connect and \"turn the paren- \/ theses inside out so that \/ we mean everything,\" they are also alive to the alluring complicity of language and its duplicity and deceptions. \"This is the way the world ends \/ Not with a bang but \/ while we watch.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA follow-up to the award-winning author's acclaimed selected poems, this new collection continues Barwin's examination of the possibilities of the poem: a celebration, a story, an investigation, a riff, a word machine, a parable, a transformation. But what are the \"most charming creatures\" of the title? In 1862, scientific illustrator Ernst Haeckel termed radiolarians (ancient single-celled organisms with mineral skeletons) \"the most charming creatures,\" but here Barwin turns the microscope around to consider something just as strange and mysterious: language, our culture, and the self. From microorganisms, onion rings, grief, and Gerard Manley Hopkins to beetles, neoliberalism, sandwiches, Martin Luther, and stand-up comedy, he offers: \"it's a miracle that we've survived \/ it's a miracle that we've survived at all.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e ECW Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/20\/2022\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781770416611\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.45lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.50d","brand":"Gary Barwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42370527199413,"sku":"9781770416611","price":18.66,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_16f020c5-65c1-4a17-8f68-7720118bd4e2.jpg?v=1663039569","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-most-charming-creatures-poems-9781770416611","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}