Gabriel Hirsch Edward
Gabriel Hirsch Edward Longlisted for the 2014 National Book AwardNever has there been a book of poems quite like Gabriel, in which a short life, a bewildering death, and the unanswerable sorrow of a…
Specifikacia Gabriel Hirsch Edward
Gabriel Hirsch Edward
Longlisted for the 2014 National Book AwardNever has there been a book of poems quite like Gabriel, in which a short life, a bewildering death, and the unanswerable sorrow of a father come together in such a sustained elegy. From its opening lines--"The funeral director opened the coffin / And there he was alone / From the waist up"--Hirsch's account is poignantly direct and open to the strange vicissitudes and tricks of grief. This unabashed sequence speaks directly from Hirsch's heart to our own, without sentimentality.
Hirsch mixes his tale of Gabriel with the stories of other poets through the centuries who have also lost children, and expresses his feelings through theirs. In propulsive three-line stanzas, he tells the story of how a once unstoppable child, who suffered from various developmental disorders, turned into an irreverent young adult, funny, rebellious, impulsive.