Embarrassments (Paperback)

For more than two decades Graham Foust has been sounding out the limits of common expression through precise lyricism, a tragicomic, almost slapstick absurdism, and syncopated guesses about what things might mean. Embarrassments offers a synthesis of that work. Running through the concerns of parenthood, climate change, and our inevitable insignificance is Foust's total commitment to excavating the strangeness of language and our entanglement with the words we share.
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/>Sample Poem:
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/>the perception of what passes in one's own mind
/>according to Locke, and what passes, too, is time,
/>which makes its way to what since the 1300s
/>has been called knowledge, and which, like many concepts,
/>has multiple names by which it can and does go,
/>as we say snake for serpent and ship for vessel
/>and grief for unhappiness, mourning, or sorrow,
/>and you think you're gone alone, but I'm not there too,
/>my disappearance a reconnaissance of you.