In the Unwalled City takes its title from Epicurus, who wrote: “Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death, we human beings all live in an unwalled city.” This affecting book—which weaves prose memoir with poetry—explores that feeling of being open to attack—in this case the pain of grief after Robert Cording’s thirty-one-year-old son Daniel died.
To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, here is “a grief observed, ” encompassing not only the big questions but also the impact of grief on daily life. For a poet like Cording, one form that grief takes is that of speaking to his son. In “Afterlife, ” Cording has a vision of his son replying: “let the emptiness remain empty . . . Stop writing down / everything you think I’m telling you. / This is your afterlife, not mine.”
At the heart of In the Unwalled City is a series of questions: How does loss change a person? How does one chart a new life that both acknowledges a son’s death and still finds a way back to delight? How does one now live fully in the unwalled city?
विषयसूची
Contents
In the Unwalled City (1)
I
Lamentations (1)
Walking
A Pair of Roseate Spoonbills
Afterlife
Not a Wish
At the Cemetery
Locket
In the Unwalled City (2)
II
Lamentations (2)
Icarus
Lost
Bobcat
Another State
Koi Pond: Failed Meditation
In the Unwalled City (3)
III
Lamentations (3)
Torment and Love
Swallowtail Kites
Melancholy’s Mirror
Aubade
Doves in Fog
Sketchbook: Naples, Florida
In the Unwalled City (4)
IV
November Deer
Father’s Day
August
St. Francis and the Birdfeeders
Next
Coffin Photos
An Answer Without a Question
Early Spring
Screensaver
Quasset and Sprucedale
The Words We Speak
In the Unwalled City (5)
Acknowledgments
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Robert Cording taught English and creative writing at College of the Holy Cross for thirty-eight years and then worked as a poetry mentor in the Seattle Pacific University MFA program. He has published nine collections of poems, the latest of which is Without My Asking, and a volume of prose on poetry and religion, Finding the World’s Fullness. He has been awarded two NEA fellowships in poetry, a Pushcart Prize, and has had work in numerous anthologies, including Poets of the New Century, The Best American Spiritual Writing, The Poetry Anthology, and The Best American Poetry.
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