The Certain Body

By Julia Guez

In the long limbo of post-viral syndrome, Julia Guez aptly frames the recursive paralysis of pandemic rhetoric, whose seeming transitions always arrive at the same uncertainty: "and then what / and then / what, what / then." The Certain Body captures life with illness-how the body moves through disease and rests in the liminal space of otherness. Following the speaker through a harrowing and disorienting SARS-Cov-2 infection, readers witness the poet's gradual refortification as Guez traverses all facets of sickness: its mercies, its pleasures, its gratitudes, its reliefs, its gorgeousnesses. Probing, sharp poems centering an awareness of human ephemerality answer the words of Viktor Shklovsky: "And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony." In "If Indeed I Am Ill," Guez writes, "These sonatas, these scores, tell me / what of them will last when everything falls away-" Through these lyric expressions, Guez shows us not just how art can heal but how healing is art, a modality of acceptance, the meaning in the process, a mosaic of imperfections that creates and embraces what is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Four Way Books
• Release date: Sep 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781954245389

Book preview

Also by Julia Guez

In an Invisible Glass Case Which Is Also a Frame

Equestrian Monuments by Luis Chaves

(co-translated with Samantha Zighelboim)

THE CERTAIN BODY

JULIA GUEZ

FOUR WAY BOOKS

TRIBECA

For

Meredith Lash

Jan Niemira

&

Winnie Varghese

Copyright © 2022 Julia Guez

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Guez, Julia, author.

Title: The certain body / Julia Guez.

Description: New York : Four Way Books, [2022]

Identifiers: LCCN 2022003879 | ISBN 9781954245303 (paperback) | ISBN 9781954245389 (epub)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3607.U4716 C47 2022 | DDC 811/.6--dc23/eng/20220128

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003879

Four Way Books is a not-for-profit literary press. We are grateful for the assistance we receive from individual donors, public arts agencies, and private foundations including the NEA, NEA Cares, Literary Arts Emergency Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

We are a proud member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.

Contents

One

Meditation at Callicoon

Still Life with Insufficient iCloud Storage

The Certain Body

As We Consider