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The Ninety-Third Name of God: Poems
Anya Krugovoy Silver's debut collection considers the flawed and gaudy flesh as it turns toward a beloved's embrace, toward the surgeon's knife. Her poems both celebrate the sensual world and seek to transcend the body's limitations through encounters with art, memory, and the divine. At once imagistic, lyrical, and meditative, Silver's verse begins in the personal sphere and then looks outward toward the wider human experiences of illness, faith, fear, and love. From chemotherapy to doing laundry, from observation of deformed pussy willows to contemplation of the word "girl," Silver does not shrink from life's "blazonry of loss." Instead, she ultimately affirms the possibility of praise and joy.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2010
57 people want to read
About the author
Anya Krugovoy Silver
6 books18 followersAnya Krugovoy Silver was an American poet. She was named Georgia Author of the Year/Poetry for 2015. Silver was recently named a Guggenheim Fellow for Poetry for 2018. She taught in the English Department at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 23, 2012
Each poem in this collection is a kind of prayer for acceptance, deliverance, courage, and forgiveness. As the speaker endures surgery for breast cancer, she also remains deeply infused in the present moments of life. As she grapples with the specter of death, her son is born. As she celebrates the season of light, a woman from her support group dies. These poems hold what is sacred. They are vessels of ecstatic love for life.
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September 16, 2012The author is my absolute favorite professor ever!
October 23, 2011
Not only is this an amazing book of poetry that I couldn't put down once I'd opened it, it's written by one of my favorite people and favorite professor.
August 9, 2019
Beautifully lush and frankly religious/spiritual, and also deeply moving. There are a number of brave, thoughtful, and surprising poems about being a breast cancer survivor... and also poems (really, all of them are like this) about loving the world in all its mundane and painful and lovely details. I loved the language of the poems, and the seeming ease with which they move.
December 28, 2022
Favorite poems:
- "To the Word 'Girl'"
- "Persimmon"
- "Lent" (Deformed Pussy Willow)
- "The Name of God"
- "The Burned Butterfly"
- "Jellyfish"
- "French Toast"
- "The Ninety-Third Name of God"
Favorite lines:
- "Blessed is the soapy breath / that sweetens each room of my house."
- "The poem was a glass I filled with light sipped through my eyelids."
- "I met a girl who controlled spring and summer. Her favorite ice cream was strawberry. / When I laughed at her, she made it rain."
- "Longing hasn't stopped since then, or breathlessness, / or the pause that comes from looking at a stranger's lovely face."
- "because, like quick birds swirling steeples, / you're stitched of dark, light, sound"
- "when someone calls me girl, my body arches / and lightens, the threads that root me unravel / and I recall myself, fifteen, splitting open pods / of milkweed, that sudden release of silk and breath."
- "[She] covered me in her easy snow, blessing / my winter, its deep and early shadows, / the ice beneath my eyelids and the good, good sleep."
- "Because I have found God, instead, when I've crouched in bathrooms, / lain back for the burning of my skin, covered my face and cursed."
- "Because when your body bruises and softens, you are perfected. / Because your soul, persimmon, is sugar."
- "I breathe the dust that has lain on the name of God, / imagine ink on my indrawn breath."
- "If prayer is forgetting, / let the colored dust of decades / rise in air, let me put away / all fluttered moments trapped / within my hair."
- "From these / scarred roofs, bone blossoms hang like brittle stars. / Drip by drip they radiate. One inch in seven / thousand years, they grow each tear by chalky tear, as if / the air draws milk from these bare walls."
- "I offer my memory's / open, blistered mouth: bring me / the dark bread, the fist- / ful of salt."
- "Oh, / I wanted it abstractly, imagined opening myself to life / the way a glazier fits frames with panes of glass, letting / in light. But I couldn't envision these filament catching."
- "I've been there. / I've touched that membrane, / blown on it, stretched it / into a bubble / with my breath. / It caught my reflection, / shivered, / and almost, almost / detached. / But something drew me back"
- "I'd like to turn transparent and float: / tide-drawn moon, blooming skirt, / eyeless dancer ascending and dropping."
- "And so I wonder, will some wayward angel, / still loving the mess and tawdriness of life, / find her way to a deserted department store, ... zip herself into a dress as smoky as a glass / of scotch, a dress she would have worn / on a late, late night, and stand before the mirror / as the silk pours like caramel over what / once were her hips, whether she will love / the caress of the cover, the flawed and gaudy flesh."
- "If I could immerse / myself in the ninety-third name of God, I would fear / no longer tumor or death. I would drink light, / I would rinse my hair in light, I would rub my shoulders / with its grains and seeds, I would anoint myself in lunar / oil, I would make love with every wide-open, glowing / humming luminous cell of my body pulsing and aflame."
- "To the Word 'Girl'"
- "Persimmon"
- "Lent" (Deformed Pussy Willow)
- "The Name of God"
- "The Burned Butterfly"
- "Jellyfish"
- "French Toast"
- "The Ninety-Third Name of God"
Favorite lines:
- "Blessed is the soapy breath / that sweetens each room of my house."
- "The poem was a glass I filled with light sipped through my eyelids."
- "I met a girl who controlled spring and summer. Her favorite ice cream was strawberry. / When I laughed at her, she made it rain."
- "Longing hasn't stopped since then, or breathlessness, / or the pause that comes from looking at a stranger's lovely face."
- "because, like quick birds swirling steeples, / you're stitched of dark, light, sound"
- "when someone calls me girl, my body arches / and lightens, the threads that root me unravel / and I recall myself, fifteen, splitting open pods / of milkweed, that sudden release of silk and breath."
- "[She] covered me in her easy snow, blessing / my winter, its deep and early shadows, / the ice beneath my eyelids and the good, good sleep."
- "Because I have found God, instead, when I've crouched in bathrooms, / lain back for the burning of my skin, covered my face and cursed."
- "Because when your body bruises and softens, you are perfected. / Because your soul, persimmon, is sugar."
- "I breathe the dust that has lain on the name of God, / imagine ink on my indrawn breath."
- "If prayer is forgetting, / let the colored dust of decades / rise in air, let me put away / all fluttered moments trapped / within my hair."
- "From these / scarred roofs, bone blossoms hang like brittle stars. / Drip by drip they radiate. One inch in seven / thousand years, they grow each tear by chalky tear, as if / the air draws milk from these bare walls."
- "I offer my memory's / open, blistered mouth: bring me / the dark bread, the fist- / ful of salt."
- "Oh, / I wanted it abstractly, imagined opening myself to life / the way a glazier fits frames with panes of glass, letting / in light. But I couldn't envision these filament catching."
- "I've been there. / I've touched that membrane, / blown on it, stretched it / into a bubble / with my breath. / It caught my reflection, / shivered, / and almost, almost / detached. / But something drew me back"
- "I'd like to turn transparent and float: / tide-drawn moon, blooming skirt, / eyeless dancer ascending and dropping."
- "And so I wonder, will some wayward angel, / still loving the mess and tawdriness of life, / find her way to a deserted department store, ... zip herself into a dress as smoky as a glass / of scotch, a dress she would have worn / on a late, late night, and stand before the mirror / as the silk pours like caramel over what / once were her hips, whether she will love / the caress of the cover, the flawed and gaudy flesh."
- "If I could immerse / myself in the ninety-third name of God, I would fear / no longer tumor or death. I would drink light, / I would rinse my hair in light, I would rub my shoulders / with its grains and seeds, I would anoint myself in lunar / oil, I would make love with every wide-open, glowing / humming luminous cell of my body pulsing and aflame."
April 3, 2018
The "Ninety-third Name of God" is a gorgeous, lyrical book filled with fresh writing and the vivid beauty of nature interwoven with stark images of breast cancer, fear and uncertainty, musings on God, and a longing for the spiritual self. I savored each poem, often reading each one twice and letting the words wash over me as I contemplated the feelings and images they evoked.
All of the poems were excellent, but a few really stood out as exceptional: The Poem in My Childhood, All the Others, Black Friday, Laying on of Hands, Nothing, When My Father Told Me Stories.
Anya Silver is a wonderful writer, a friend, and someone I admire very much. I feel woefully inadequate to write a review of her work, especially poetry, as poems are the most personal of writings. However, I offer these words to convey as best I can my impressions of her poetry, not as a critic, but as a grateful reader.
All of the poems were excellent, but a few really stood out as exceptional: The Poem in My Childhood, All the Others, Black Friday, Laying on of Hands, Nothing, When My Father Told Me Stories.
Anya Silver is a wonderful writer, a friend, and someone I admire very much. I feel woefully inadequate to write a review of her work, especially poetry, as poems are the most personal of writings. However, I offer these words to convey as best I can my impressions of her poetry, not as a critic, but as a grateful reader.
July 10, 2018
Katherine, Central patron, July 2018, 5 stars:
Silver’s poems carry deep Polish and Russian influences and a wide-eyed wonder for the world around her. The book’s three sections explore love, faith, motherhood and the crux of suffering a cancer diagnosis brings to a young woman. Haunting and lovely.
Silver’s poems carry deep Polish and Russian influences and a wide-eyed wonder for the world around her. The book’s three sections explore love, faith, motherhood and the crux of suffering a cancer diagnosis brings to a young woman. Haunting and lovely.
December 3, 2018
A powerful, poignant collection of poems as a woman of faith confronts the changes and challenges of breast cancer, including coping with the aftermath of chemo and a mastectomy and raising a young son. Beautiful and often heart-breaking, but not without humor or levity, this collection is highly recommended.
August 29, 2024
Gorgeous
January 16, 2026
What a gut punch.
November 24, 2014
I loved this collection of poetry. It is unique, and although it is heavily influenced by religion, she does an excellent job of making it enjoyable to people of all walks of life, whether they are religious or not. Her vocabulary is absolutely stunning, her images are fresh, and her poetic structures are wonderful. She writes in a way that is provocative, raw, and delicate. Many of her poems deal with breast cancer, and the way that she portrays her struggle is simply extraordinary. This is by far the most eloquent and beautiful collection I've come across thus far.
I have two favorite poems from this collection:
"After A Mastectomy":
"I want to be whole / to uncup, again, a breast's blooming / chrysanthemum / Or, failing that-- / be true, restrain / imagine a man's mouth wet on what remains."
"The Burned Butterfly":
"Char my wings. Lord, singe / these cells of forewing, hindwing. / Blacken memory's sky blue / shimmer, its thousand of cells-- / each startling pigment, each / dorsal and ventral venation-- / the coppered glint of flight, / Oh Lord. If prayer is forgetting, / let the colored dust of decades / rise in the air, let me put away / all fluttered moments trapped / within my hair. These bodies / of memory--crippled, drab-- / across the thirsty earth do blow. / I bring You, Lord, the rest / of it: my driving mind, / my flightless soul."
I have two favorite poems from this collection:
"After A Mastectomy":
"I want to be whole / to uncup, again, a breast's blooming / chrysanthemum / Or, failing that-- / be true, restrain / imagine a man's mouth wet on what remains."
"The Burned Butterfly":
"Char my wings. Lord, singe / these cells of forewing, hindwing. / Blacken memory's sky blue / shimmer, its thousand of cells-- / each startling pigment, each / dorsal and ventral venation-- / the coppered glint of flight, / Oh Lord. If prayer is forgetting, / let the colored dust of decades / rise in the air, let me put away / all fluttered moments trapped / within my hair. These bodies / of memory--crippled, drab-- / across the thirsty earth do blow. / I bring You, Lord, the rest / of it: my driving mind, / my flightless soul."
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews