Time and Chance - (Joan Books) by Katharine Coles (Paperback)

About the Book

"Majestic, playful, brainy, heart-wrenching, Katharine Coles's tenth collection of poems at once celebrates and elegizes: her teachers and parents-both dead at ninety-who still issue advice (some good, some not) from beyond the grave; the creatures who pass through her canyon quarter-acre; the moon as it rises and sets; even her Levi's shrink-to-fits, when she realizes she'll never wear out another pair. The poems "guide us with their empathy, sometimes yoked with a wry irony, around the physics of interactions." [John Kinsella] More than anything, this is a book about presence: haunted by the past yet firmly rooted in the also-haunting now, Coles keeps spinning, finding herself in words, in her body, in time"--

Book Synopsis

"[W]itness the sharp, wry play of a dazzling mind."--COLE SWENSEN, author of And And And

Majestic, playful, brainy, heart-wrenching, Katharine Coles's tenth collection of poems at once celebrates and elegizes: her teachers and parents--both dead at ninety--who still issue advice (some good, some not) from beyond the grave; the creatures who pass through her canyon quarter-acre; the moon as it rises and sets; even her Levi's shrink-to-fits, when she realizes she'll never wear out another pair. The poems "guide us with their empathy, sometimes yoked with a wry irony, around the physics of interactions." [John Kinsella] More than anything, this is a book about presence: haunted by the past yet firmly rooted in the also-haunting now, Coles keeps spinning, finding herself in words, in her body, in time.

Review Quotes

Praise for Time and Chance

"Time and Chance resonates with an intensity of sculpted lines and precise language. It is such a tactile book, so much so I am reminded of the fineness yet incredible strength of spider's web. Each poem is whittled into a shape that imparts meaning with acuity and specificity. But this is also a conceptual book about points of contact between the physical and spiritual worlds--a book of loss and recovery, of recollection and processing of that loss. The body, in all its vulnerabilities, shapes the book across its sections, and the senses are placed under biological and notional pressure, adjusting to interpret a damaged and changing world. Whether it's an intense closeness to animals, or a re-embodying personal loss through elegy, or sharp philosophical contemplation about language, matter, and the physical world we inhabit, Katharine Coles's poems guide us with their empathy, sometimes yoked with a wry irony, around the physics of interactions."

--JOHN KINSELLA, author of Aporia

Praise for Katharine Coles

"Katharine Coles is a rarity in her generation or any generation: her understanding that poetry is a quintessentially formal art has allowed her to create her own conventions and explode the usual dichotomies between public and private life. . . . She is a true original."
--TOM SLEIGH, author of The King's Touch

"Under Katharine Coles's delicate, mindful scrutiny, reality shivers and relentlessly reinvents itself."
--ALICE FULTON, author of Coloratura On A Silence Found In Many Expressive Systems

"With each line break, we hear something click, and something new falls into place, a perfect fit, but one that upends what's just been said . . . allowing us to witness the sharp, wry play of a dazzling mind."
--COLE SWENSEN, author of And And And

About the Author

Time and Chance is Katharine Coles's tenth collection of poems. Turtle Point Press also published her collection (Solve for) X, her collection of essays, The Stranger I Become: On Walking, Looking, and Writing, and her memoir, Look Both Ways: A Double Journey Along My Grandmother's Far-flung Path. A Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she teaches courses in creative writing, poetry, and poetics, she has received grants and awards from The Guggenheim Foundation, the US National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writer Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.