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Claude before Time and Space: Poems
In Claude before Time and Space , her final collection, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Claudia Emerson quietly but fiercely explores the themes of mortality and time.
In the first section of this book, “The Wheel,” Emerson uses a rural southern setting in poems that reflect on memory, the self, and relationships. In section two, “Bird Ephemera , ” she explores historical figures―from an early naturalist and writer who raised her children in poverty to a small-town doctor. The collection concludes with a series of poems named after the poet’s father. This illuminating body of work displays a master poet at the height of her craft.
In the first section of this book, “The Wheel,” Emerson uses a rural southern setting in poems that reflect on memory, the self, and relationships. In section two, “Bird Ephemera , ” she explores historical figures―from an early naturalist and writer who raised her children in poverty to a small-town doctor. The collection concludes with a series of poems named after the poet’s father. This illuminating body of work displays a master poet at the height of her craft.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Hardcover
Published February 26, 2018
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About the author
Claudia Emerson
19 books38 followersBorn and raised in Chatham, Virginia, Claudia Emerson studied writing at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Her poetry, steeped in the Southern Narrative tradition, bears the influences of Ellen Bryant Voigt, Betty Adcock, and William Faulkner. Of the collection Late Wife (2005), poet Deborah Pope observed, “Like the estranged lover in one of her poems who pitches horseshoes in the dark with preternatural precision, so Emerson sends her words into a different kind of darkness with steely exactness, their arc of perception over and over striking true.”
Emerson’s volumes of poetry include Pharaoh, Pharaoh (1997); Pinion: An Elegy (2002); Late Wife (2005), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Figure Studies (2008); and Secure the Shadow (2012).
Her honors include two additional Pulitzer Prize nominations as well as fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2008 she was appointed poet laureate of Virginia, a two-year role.
Emerson was poetry editor for the Greensboro Review and a contributing editor for Shenandoah. She taught at Washington and Lee University, Randolph-Macon Women’s College, and the University of Mary Washington. She died in 2014.
From The Poetry Foundation website.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/c...
Emerson’s volumes of poetry include Pharaoh, Pharaoh (1997); Pinion: An Elegy (2002); Late Wife (2005), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Figure Studies (2008); and Secure the Shadow (2012).
Her honors include two additional Pulitzer Prize nominations as well as fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2008 she was appointed poet laureate of Virginia, a two-year role.
Emerson was poetry editor for the Greensboro Review and a contributing editor for Shenandoah. She taught at Washington and Lee University, Randolph-Macon Women’s College, and the University of Mary Washington. She died in 2014.
From The Poetry Foundation website.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/c...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 9, 2019
Claude Before Space and Time is Claudia Emerson's final complete collection, in which, as the jacket says, she "quietly but fiercely explores the themes of mortality and time." These poems are heartbreakingly beautiful, and unsparing. I found it impossible to read these and not be aware they were written in her last months. The juxtaposition of such poems as "On Leaving the Body to Science," and "Birth Narrative" reminds me of not just the cycle of life and the inevitability of death, but the connections between death and birth, a connection made here in story, in narrative, in poetry. I am also reminded me of how Claudia and I met in graduate school at UNC Greensboro, and the gift of finding each other at the University of Mary Washington, and the last message she sent me, a month before she died.
She left too soon.
Highly recommended.
She left too soon.
Highly recommended.
April 4, 2025
This is, I believe, unfortunately, the final poems that the world will receive from Claudia Emerson. So that automatically gives it weight. The book brings more to the table than just that though—it brings the metaphors, line breaks, and soft depth that Emerson was known for.
Swimming Alone is one of my favorites, an amazing opener, where an isolated pond shifts from this world into the next: “She is unafraid as I / would have been afraid if I had / arrived before her, too timid / to leave the heat- / splintered dock.” Friendship across time, and I especially like how women without children form their own genealogies.
Spontaneous Remission and On Leaving the Body to Science are hard to read, given how Emerson’s life ended.
The middle section, Bird Ephemera, might be my favorite. She plays with space on the page like few others, and to great effect. Especially in Midwife, but honestly throughout the entire section. They’re persona poems, which Emerson has been pulling off well since Pinion (if not earlier).
The Claude section is fun, and the closer (book closer) is just… very much on brand for the poet: “And you know it is not / so hard, the ritual of burial in the evening— / banking coals in their inscape of ash, where you / find them alive in the morning, coax them / the way you might a bloom’s eclosion / from seed. It is as though you believe the match— / not the fire—the precious thing, a rarity.”
This collection is not driven by the same urgency as Late Wife or Impossible Bottle, but not surprising, given the time in the poet’s life. It accepts that time, and life, inevitably passes on and leaves us in its wake. Luckily, we have Emerson’s verses to keep her with us.
Swimming Alone is one of my favorites, an amazing opener, where an isolated pond shifts from this world into the next: “She is unafraid as I / would have been afraid if I had / arrived before her, too timid / to leave the heat- / splintered dock.” Friendship across time, and I especially like how women without children form their own genealogies.
Spontaneous Remission and On Leaving the Body to Science are hard to read, given how Emerson’s life ended.
The middle section, Bird Ephemera, might be my favorite. She plays with space on the page like few others, and to great effect. Especially in Midwife, but honestly throughout the entire section. They’re persona poems, which Emerson has been pulling off well since Pinion (if not earlier).
The Claude section is fun, and the closer (book closer) is just… very much on brand for the poet: “And you know it is not / so hard, the ritual of burial in the evening— / banking coals in their inscape of ash, where you / find them alive in the morning, coax them / the way you might a bloom’s eclosion / from seed. It is as though you believe the match— / not the fire—the precious thing, a rarity.”
This collection is not driven by the same urgency as Late Wife or Impossible Bottle, but not surprising, given the time in the poet’s life. It accepts that time, and life, inevitably passes on and leaves us in its wake. Luckily, we have Emerson’s verses to keep her with us.
March 5, 2018
This is a sharp, beautiful book. Emerson was a stunning talent, and her early loss is a loss to poetry.
March 3, 2018
Sadly, not my favorite collection. However, her skill at observation and story telling is ever present.
July 15, 2020
a heartbreaking collection
July 15, 2020
Maryann, Central patron, July 2020, 4 stars:
A heartbreaking collection.
A heartbreaking collection.
November 21, 2020
Marvelous.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews