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NOT FOR ART NOR PRAYER

Darren C. Demaree — Poetry / Contemporary Poetry / Family / Devotional Poetry

Book Description

Darren C. Demaree's NOT FOR ART NOR PRAYER moves deftly through coming-of-age, marriage, and young fatherhood in poems of praise and devotion. There is a poem for the server at a hometown dive, a poem for the teething child, and a series of love poems that is at once refreshingly playful and deeply felt. Then again, these are all love poems: poems that love by giving attention, by being sensitive and generous to their subjects.

In his "Adorations" — numbered poems addressed by name to the people who populate his life — Demaree creates a poetics of radical gratitude. The couple in the Chipotle parking lot. Whitey, the assistant clubhouse manager for the Cleveland Indians. Anna, his neighbour who lost her breasts to cancer. Reuben, who once worked with him at the Steinkeller bar in Oxford, Ohio. Each receives the poet's full, unhurried attention — a gift of seeing that transforms the ordinary into the luminous.

There is art here in Demaree's fourth collection, yes, and prayer — but as the title insists, these poems are something else entirely. They are records of what it means to pay attention, to be alive among other people, to find the miraculous embedded in the quotidian. Demaree resists sleight-of-hand poetic transubstantiation while slyly acknowledging the inevitably transformative nature of language — and the result is a collection of extraordinary warmth and quiet power.

Pull Quotes

"...artful and prayerful... In clear, crisply nuanced lines, Demaree gives praise to small quirky moments, to ordinary human exchanges, to the miracles of quotidian love, to Wednesdays, to Ohio... these generously attentive and marvelously whimsical poems repeatedly resist sleight-of-hand poetic transubstantiation, while slyly acknowledging the inevitably transformative nature of language."

Lee Ann Roripaugh, author of Dandarians

"Darren C. Demaree's Not for Art nor Prayer moves deftly through coming-of-age, marriage, and young fatherhood in poems of praise and devotion. There is a poem for the server at a hometown dive, a poem for the teething child, and a series of love poems that is at once refreshingly playful and deeply felt. Then again, these are all love poems: poems that love by giving attention, by being sensitive and generous to their subjects. There is art here in Demaree's fourth collection, yes, and prayer."

Maggie Smith, author of The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison

Author Bio

DARREN C. DEMAREE is the author of numerous poetry collections, including six titles with 8th House Publishing: AS WE REFER TO OUR BODIES, LADY YOU SHOT ME, MANY FULL HANDS APPLAUDING INELEGANTLY, NUDE MALE WITH ECHO, NOT FOR ART NOR PRAYER, and BURNING IT DOWN. His poems are characterized by their precision, energy, and ability to find beauty in the smallest of margins. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and he has been widely recognized as one of the most prolific and distinctive voices in contemporary American poetry.

Book Details

Also by This Author

AS WE REFER TO OUR BODIES, LADY YOU SHOT ME, MANY FULL HANDS APPLAUDING INELEGANTLY, NUDE MALE WITH ECHO, BURNING IT DOWN (all published by 8th House Publishing)