We have plenty of stories
The left side of the neck, the bottom of the big toe
A shadow in the garden, a prejudice against the wolf
Further without hesitating, not knowing whither
Not there? Any more than here?
Then where is God?
Award-winning poetry book by Cornell author Mary Gilliland
Mary Gilliland’s magisterial new collection, The Devil’s Fools, opens in myth and magic, but its vast reach is deeply rooted in her reverence for earth and all earthly creations. For Gilliland, to give a brief example, even so lowly a creature as the harvestfly—whose “aqua / lighter blue” wings as it hatches—has given us “the origin of faerie.” At once eco-sensual and erudite, Gilliland writes a nuanced poetry that richly investigates humanity’s contradictory capacities to destroy and to love. “Love’s a maker,” as the tour-de-force poem at the heart of this volume, “Among the Trees,” puts it. From first to last, I am spellbound by the largesse of vision and the beauty of this wondrous collection.
CYNTHIA HOGUE
The Devil’s Fools is a great collection of burnished, mercurial poems. Here Mary Gilliland turns every small, disappearing moment into something magnanimous and lasting. Mythical and grounded, her sensuously rich language enacts a poetry in which self-concentration brims beyond the far reach of desire, passion, and the self. Supremely gifted, Gilliland’s The Devil’s Fools is one of the most daring, unfoolable books in recent memory.
Ishion Hutchinson
From the opening line, “We have plenty of stories,” to the finale, Mary Gilliland’s The Devil’s Fools proves a wide-ranging narrative which incorporates tales from classical myth, the Bible, the speaker’s daily life, set in a world eroticized yet also spiritual. Through her stories, Gilliland examines the tensions of heterosexual relationships, a search for the divine in contemporary life, mystery in the daily. This book is both journey and celebration, glowing and tender. In a poetry full of images from the physical world, nature around us and the body’s earthliness, Gilliland gives us her “dirty yes to life”.
Mary Crow
To see through Mary Gilliland’s eyes is to experience afresh and anew the wonders of encounter with the liminal, the mysterious, and the all too ubiquitous but largely unseen. Enjoy the ride! As Gilliland calls us in Dionysus’s voice, “Greet me by Apollo’s marble door, Meet me where Artemis drops spoor, Find me in the shadows of reliefs.” Indeed I will—and what a joy and journey awaits!
Heidi M. Ravven
Subverting received traditions, embellishing mythic figures, the lyrics of The Devil’s Fools speak to and for those wanting heaven: modern pilgrims, medieval masons; seafarer, axe murderer, alcoholic; daughter, spouse, sibling, mother; a woman on pause, a monarch of the underworld, Eve stepping out past Eden. One country bombs another, there’s mass animal slaughter during epidemic, never-ending yard work, love letters from the dead. Humans sorrow and glory, mourn and thrive, treasure the will to live—with burdock and mushroom, apple and willow, cicada, cuckoo, brontosaurus, toad. The poems represent wild and delicious creaturely delusion, deception, vigor and joy.
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