Chameleon hours - Partridge, Elise (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
Poems. - Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
Acknowledgments; ONE; TWO; THREE; FOUR; FIVE; Notes
From Ways of Goingfor SteveWill it be like paragliding--gossamer takeoff, seedlike drifting downinto a sunlit, unexpected grove?Or ski-jumping--headlong soaring, ski-tips piercing clouds, crystal revelations astonishing my goggles?. ... Skittery flicker of a glare-weary lizardstartled into the sheltering wings of a leaf, rusting freighter with a brimming holdshimmering onto a crimson edge. . . .Sad rower pushed from shore, I'll disappear like circles summonedby an oar's dip. However I burn through to the next atmosphere, let your dear face be the last thing I see
Whether writing poems about North American life and landscape; or love poems; or elegies for family and friends; or poems on serious, debilitating illness and the transformations it can effect-- Partridge offers in Chameleon Hours words forged by suffering and courage. Full of wit and empathy, Partridge's poems draw inspiration from sources as whimsical as tortoises and pontoons, as poignant as a homeless woman taking shelter inside a post office on a winter night, and as deeply personal as her own cancer diagnosis at a young age. Chameleon Hours is a book about the rewards of being reminded of one's own mortality and the lyric expression of life in all its intensity