Godhouse

Poems that consider the human body as a meeting place of the infinite and the mortal.

Starting with the idea that the human experience is the universe looking back at itself, godhouse takes the notion a few steps further by centering cosmology within a raced and gendered body. Ruth Ellen Kocher's poems envision this body as a union of god and soul that, within our material world, encompasses love and hate, joy and despair. The body is a site of divine presence made mortal, electrified with the resonance of both the infinite and the human. In godhouse, we encounter the body as a site where the universe is made personal and celebratory, where the celestial endure the complications of flesh and friction forms between the glorious and the monstrous aspects of personhood.

ISBN-13: 9781632431165

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Omnidawn

Publication Date: 11-30-2023

Pages: 140

Ruth Ellen Kocher is the author of seven books: Third Voice, winner of the PEN Open Book Award; Ending in Planes; Goodbye Lyric: The Gigans and Lovely Gun; domina Un/blued, which won the Dorset Prize and the 2014 PEN/Open Book Award; One Girl Babylon, winner of the Green Rose Prize; When the Moon Knows You're Wandering; and Desdemona's Fire. She is a contributing editor at Poets & Writers Magazine and has been named a distinguished professor of English at the University of Colorado.