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Infused with eco-logic, informed by feminism, and taking cues from Eve, Cain, Proserpine, Ulysses, Parsifal, and selves present and past, the fifty poems of The Devil's Fools question and illustrate myths of nature and the nature of inherited myth.
Subverting received traditions, embellishing mythic figures, the lyrics of The Devil's Fools speak to and for those wanting heaven: modern pilgrims, medieval masons; seafarer, axe murderer, alcoholic; daughter, spouse, sibling, mother; a woman on pause, a monarch of the underworld, Eve stepping out past Eden. One country bombs another, there's mass animal slaughter during epidemic, never-ending yard work, love letters from the dead. Humans sorrow and glory, mourn and thrive, treasure the will to live-with burdock and mushroom, apple and willow, cicada, cuckoo, brontosaurus, toad. The poems represent wild and delicious creaturely delusion, deception, vigor, and joy.
"Mary Gilliland's magisterial new collection, The Devil's Fools, opens in myth and magic, but its vast reach is deeply rooted in her reverence for earth and all earthly creations. For Gilliland, to give a brief example, even so lowly a creature as the harvestfly—whose 'aqua / lighter blue' wings as it hatches—has given us 'the origin of faerie.' At once eco-sensual and erudite, Gilliland writes a nuanced poetry that richly investigates humanity's contradictory capacities to destroy and to love, 'Love's a maker,' as the tour-de-force poem at the heart of this volume, 'Among the Trees,' puts it. From first to last, I am spellbound by the largesse of vision and the beauty of this wondrous collection." — Cynthia Hogue, author of In June the Labyrinth
"The Devil's Fools is a great collection of burnished, mercurial poems. Here Mary Gilliland turns every small, disappearing moment into something magnanimous and lasting. Mythical and grounded, her sensuously rich language enacts a poetry in which self-concentration brims beyond the far reach of desire, passion, and the self. Supremely gifted, Gilliland's The Devil's Fools is one of the most daring, unfoolable books in recent memory." — Ishion Hutchinson, author of House of Lords and Commons
"From the opening line, 'We have plenty of stories,' to the finale, Mary Gilliland's The Devil's Fools proves a wide-ranging narrative which incorporates tales from classical myth, the Bible, the speaker's daily life, set in a world eroticized yet also spiritual. Through her stories, Gilliland examines the tensions of heterosexual relationships, a search for the divine in contemporary life, mystery in the daily. This book is both journey and celebration, glowing and tender. In a poetry full of images from the physical world, nature around us and the body's earthliness, Gilliland gives us her 'dirty yes to life'." — Mary Crow, Poet Laureate of Colorado, author of I Have Tasted the Apple
"To see through Mary Gilliland's eyes is to experience afresh and anew the wonders of encounter with the liminal, the mysterious, and the all too ubiquitous but largely unseen. Enjoy the ride! As Gilliland calls us in Dionysus's voice, 'Greet me by Apollo's marble door, Meet me where Artemis drops spoor, Find me in the shadows of reliefs.' Indeed I will—and what a joy and journey awaits!" — Heidi M. Ravven, author of The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will
1. The Woman in the Hat Paused, Mole-Eyed
2. Lyre
3. God of the Vine
4. Proserpine
5. The Fertile Land
6. Slip
7. Drenched
9. Lit with Radiance
10. Holy Island
11. Rosslyn Chapel’s Artisans
14. Converse
15. No Outlet
16. Cain
17. Midlothian
18. Quarantine in the Borders
19. ‘to ashes...to dust’ / The Cattle of the Sun
21. Wake Me
22. Dionysus
23. The Wild Celery
24. Intermittent Pipe
25. Heat Wave
26. Among the Trees
34. Sabbath
35. Synergy
37. We Live in Syn / Chronicity
38. No, but I Got the Laundry Done
39. Why She Can’t Eat the Light
41. She Wanted My Hearts the Same Way
42. Going Places
43. The Adversary
44. The Way I Talk
45. Growth Rings
46. Winter in the Garden
47. Blackbilled Cuckoo
48. Dog Day Harvestfly
49. Larger Than Life
50. Because in The Leafpile I Pitchforked a Yellowjacket Nest
51. Nemesis
52. About to Burn Her Dress
53. Stirrings
54. Critical Mass — Disposed of
55. The Bargain
56. Scottish Roots
58. Motherwort
59. My Dirty Yes to Life
60. Your Mouth on Me
61. Fresh Coffee After You Are Gone
62. Air
63. The Language of Bees
64. Migration