In June the Labyrinth

Cynthia Hogue author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Red Hen Press

Published:1st Jun '17

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In June the Labyrinth cover

In her stunning ninth collection of poetry, In June the Labyrinth, Cynthia Hogue tells a deeply personal lyric of love and loss through a mythic story. This book-length serial poem follows Elle, a dying woman, as she travels a trans-historical, trans-geographical terrain on a quest to investigate the labyrinth not only as myth and symbol, but something akin to the “labyrinth of the broken heart.” At the heart of Elle’s individual story is the earnest female pilgrim’s journey, full of disappointment but also hard-won wisdom and courage—inspired by Hogue’s own composited experience with loss, in particular the death of her mother. Rooted in the idea of the labyrinth as a symbol for life, as in the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe that Hogue would visit the summer of her mother’s death, these poems above all distill, fracture, recompose, and tell only partially—literally in parts but also in loving detail—the story of a life.

“What is happening when a book following (in every sense) a mother’s death takes the form of a postmodernist stream of consciousness, giving full weight to space and silence, to the roots and routes of language, and to the predicament of the body? The poet’s mind, as it were, breaking and entering? Today I could say I read In June the Labyrinth, or I could say I let the poem carry me downstream. The ghost of Shelley waved from the bank of the river. The world was being shattered but I was safe, thanks to Cynthia Hogue’s well-made craft, in which I rode.” —Alicia Ostriker, author of The Book of Seventy, winner of the Jewish National Book Award

“Hogue has a knack for intensity. And she ingeniously describes natural processes in apt human terms—for instance, “the concentration it takes / for water to become / ice.”. . . Hogue’s particular wit and intensity relay not merely the appearance of art, but the experience of it, ‘its complication of what is.’” —Craig Morgan Teicher, New York Times Sunday Book Review

“Reading Cynthia Hogue’s gorgeous new book is a little like being in a labyrinth: you know where you’re going, but the turns keep surprising you and taking you places you didn’t expect. This wonderful long poem—unbroken, again like a labyrinth—is heartbreaking, but the aesthetic richness and emotional depth make it a great gift.” —Martha Collins, author of One: An American Scrapbook and Blue Front

"Cynthia Hogue’s In June the Labyrinth is a stunning and unforgettable book. It is a letting in of grief rather than a letting go. Hogue’s poems demonstrate how one does not recover but rather uncovers and discovers truths about the other’s being in relation to oneself. Ultimately, these truths come to rest in language itself, in the poem embodied as a form of conscious companion."—Heather Thomas, The Florida Review

  • Reading for The Arkansas International
  • Reading for POG Arts Tuscon
  • Reading for Verse-Virtual Journal
  • Guest editor for The Academy of American Poets<

  • ISBN: 9781597090377

    Dimensions: 228mm x 152mm x 5mm

    Weight: 91g

    76 pages