Catch, by Amanda Jernigan

Today's poem will be no stranger to subscribers of CNQ, nor (as of yesterday) to readers of The Malahat Review. Here's a taste of what Malahat has to say about Amanda's poem:

“Catch” stacks layers of meaning in a deceptively simple moment: a game of catch between a father and son. Father and son have a biblical resonance where passing the ball is, metaphorically, the move from Old Testament to the New Testament, from the alpha of Genesis to the omega of Revelations (she could also intend Adam and Cain or Abel, with Adam passing on original sin). Because the ball is “in the shape / of the sun,” both modern science and classical myth intervene—the red giant sun will “eat / its children” like the Titans of classical mythology. The present moment of the poem steps out of biblical scenes; the speaker’s astronomical knowledge is an obvious clue, but the poem works as well as it does because the ideas harmonize so effectively with the rest of the sequence.

Get it? Taste? Who'd have thought paedophagia was this week's blog theme. A neat bit of cutlery-work, that review: and if you're out there, Chris Jennings, know that you had me at "Milton." Oh dear.

Amanda Jernigan and her deceptively simple child-eating poems are of course on their way to Windsor RIGHT NOW, for a reading at the Phog Lounge. Yes that's right. I'm STILL TALKING ABOUT IT. Amanda Jernigan, Mike Barnes, and Claire Tacon all pass through Windsor's orbit tonight at 7 PM, and I for one can't wait. Come one, come all. My father was holding a ball in the shape / of some fun ...