Bear Stories

by J'Lyn Chapman

Poetry. BEAR STORIES is a series of investigations into the violences of erotic love, where violence is figured as a natural consequence of the body's vulnerability. These "stories" seek to describe, implore, and seduce their audience. But they are also the mind trying to come to terms with the paradoxes of desire, wherein the "domestic" habits of care of oneself and care of the other take on an unreal quality, constantly under threat from the natural world, just as the body is under threat, the mind is under threat, language is under threat. While the speaker enters the uncanny and haunted wilderness with the distance of a visitor, her desire and language swell into an embodiment of the "grid and viscera."

Genres: Poetry

36 pages, pamphlet

First published January 1, 2008