Oberlin College Press

RANDOM SYMMETRIES:

THE COLLECTED POEMS OF TOM ANDREWS

Paper $22.95 (ISBN 0-932440-92-4)

This posthumous volume brings together the poems of Tom Andrews, whose untimely death in 2001 cut off a career marked by early achievement and remarkable innovation. It comprises two previously published books (The Brother's Country and The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle), two unpublished manuscripts (25 Short Films About Poetry and The Temptation of Saint Augustine), and closes with two late uncollected poems. The willingness to experiment, to explore the borders between poetry and other art forms, including film, novel, and memoir, is everywhere in this dazzling text.

"The leaves just burst from his fingers. He had that odd stance to the world and its language that made whatever he wrote seem new and undiscovered, like treasure hauled up into the sealight from the ocean floor."
--Charles Wright

NORTH OF THE FUTURE

Did I displace you, Lord, by being here?
Does my body crowd out your body?
Afflict me with Attention Surplus Disorder
so I can see what is in front of my face.

Sunned sparrows dart and mar each other's
minor voices. The imperial River rots
like a stone. Who arranged this barrage
of applause and decay? Ancient of Days, be with me.

Wind panhandles my eyes. Black night licks at my song.
The catalpa tree ponders its canny name.
Lord, move, just this once, yourself out of the way
so I can see the endless spaces you fill without you in them.

Charity, mercy, hope, faith, compassion, love:
a golem made of grief?
I feel his greased limbs circling
in my limbs. And then I don't feel him.

The live world finding a choir is a soul.
The soul is very small: it fits in the hand like a hazelnut.
When I die I will discover
there are people in the world.

--Tom Andrews