Stations of the Left Hand

Agricola Street Books Verified independent store

→

In Stations of the Left Hand Don Domanski is continually looking up—atthe sun, the moon, the stars, and even the occasional dragon. Theheavens, luminous with celestial bodies, rise above the poem, creating adual, contradictory effect, expanding and shrinking the humanexperience: making us bigger because of our sense of belonging in thecosmos, yet revealing our appalling minuteness in the context of theuniverse.The book is prefaced by this quotation from Hermes Epimetheus: “Theleft hand leads us through matter, which is really nothing other thanpure spirit thickened like clotted blood, the blood that was spilt upontime and space.” The physical as a kind of “clotting” of thespiritual seems to be Domanski’s main preoccupation in this book. Morespecifically, he seems dedicated to hunting down the trace that thespirit leaves behind after it has “thickened” into body.These poems attack the reader with a rush of sense impressions, like avideo on fast-forward or a ride on a rushing roller coaster. The piecesare rich in metaphors and similes, which the reader must not pass overtoo quickly lest they miss the subtlety of their nuances: “to theleft there’s a cow / standing like a public building / closed for aholiday / on his right a huge maple tree / filled with handshakes / andlost conversations” (“He Leans Homeward”). Show more