One Body: Poems Book

One Body is Margaret Gibson's most intimate collection of poems to date. Written as if to honor the injunction "Work to simplify the heart," the poems are direct, empathetic, and tender in their study of life and death. The thirteen poems of the opening sequence, as well as other poems throughout, look steadily at life and death until they are transparently "one body." "Closer to death," she writes, "I want great faith and great doubt." Whether the focus is personal or social, Gibson has written the poems in this stunning collection "because I want to see / how the body goes still / how the mind, how the lens of the eye / magnifies to an emptiness / so deep, so flared wide / there is everywhere field and the Source / of field." One Body is the work of a richly contemplative poet.

About the Author
MARGARET GIBSON is the author of eight previous poetry collections, including Autumn Grasses; Icon and Evidence; Long Walks in the Afternoon; Memories of the Future: The Daybooks of Tina Modotti; the National Book Award finalist The Vigil: A Poem in Four Voices; and Earth Elegy: New and Selected Poems. She lives in Preston, Connecticut.