When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double : : Poems

Locations
Call Number: 811.6 De
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	811.6 De	4-week checkout	On Shelf

I -- The Philosophical Nature of Peeps -- An Unkindness of Ravens -- When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double -- My Drowned Lover's Soul Inhabits My Dog -- Close -- Refugee -- You Say the Kitchen Is Your Country -- Figaro Speaks -- Palm Reading Detroit -- The Fist on Jefferson Avenue Meets Isaac Newton -- My Mother Cuts Me Open and Finds an Apple Inside -- Anatomy Lessons -- Planetary Biology at Beaumont Hospital -- Anesthesia Awareness -- Ya'aburnee -- Excuses for Not Falling in Love -- My Eyes Find the Face of the Person I Love and Pull Out Their Fork and Knife -- Neruda in My Kitchen -- The Strange Fate of Falling into a Black Hole -- II -- In the Garden of the Universe -- I Feel Like I Sprained My Damn Heart" -- Extirpation -- Heartbreak Number One -- Tatterdemalion -- Snow Falls Off Bare Branch -- The Artof Kintsugi -- What Saves Her -- The Girl from Ipanema Visits Detroit, 1964 -- Instructions for the Aspiring Rock Star, Circa 1894 -- Wild Spirit -- Pareidolia Speaks -- Electric Metamorphosis -- Three Stages of Abandonment -- Open Heart Surgery -- Saudade -- A Taste for Duende -- Guilt Masquerades as Pleasure at the Venetian Ball of Sweets -- Sex, Guilt, and Counter Espionage, Sinatra Style -- Solving for X -- My Grandfather My Madame X -- My Colosseum -- Military Secrets -- Dream Where I Find My Roof -- Another Dream About Not Having Children -- La Familia -- III -- The Cinematic Nature of Nightmares -- Swamped -- How to Make Horror Films -- Dementia Walks into a Bar -- Art Critic Robert Hughes Finally Writes About Goya -- The Man Who Lost His Words -- In the Company of Sufferers -- All Day I've Been Trying to Convince Myself -- Ass -- Pulp Sugar in the Voice of Captain Friday -- Opera Buffa -- Bone Bone Frisson -- Man and Flambe -- The Home Shopping Network Waxes Poetic -- Pimping the Faltering No -- Decathect -- Self-Portrait as Autopsy -- Crush -- The Gift -- Agnostic -- How Much Freedom Do You Give the Fly You Caught for a Pet? -- Doubling the Entendre.
"Who wouldn't want a metaphorical stunt double to take the perilous fall that comes with the pain of loss or profound disappointment? The poems in When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double by Diane DeCillis considers resourceful ways in which we become our own stunt double and explores through a poet's eyes the anatomy of the mind, body, and soul. Although many of these are poems about loss and heartbreak, this book is not about being a victim. It's about how we not only survive our most challenging moments but how we thrive in spite of them. These are poems about all of the ways our hearts both help us and betray us during major life events: dealing with divorce, the death of a loved one, separation from those closest to you, or with the agonizing experience of memory loss. The speaker appreciatively observes "how hard the muscle has worked / lifting and lowering the weight of love and sorrow." DeCillis writes that loss can feel like your heart is limping "like a wounded animal / before you sink into the shelter of your own shadow." But with every loss in these poems comes rebirth-a beautiful, sensory-rich wildflower garden of new breaths and experiences. The character of the heart is depicted as a piece of human anatomy at the same time it's portrayed as its own world; an entire planet. DeCillis personifies the mitral, aortic, and pulmonary valves, describing our bodies as blooming with vegetation, a recursive image of living things thriving inside living things. When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double takes us on a journey of what it means to be fully human. It touches upon the gifts we find in humor, nature, art, food, and how we celebrate the beauty of our scars. These are love poems: to others, to the self, to the body. DeCillis makes it clear that wounds need attention and care, but that loss always strengthen us. This collection will be admired by poetry lovers of all kinds, and those who enjoy modern and corporeal love poems"-- Provided by publisher

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