Twelve Clocks
As the reader is transported from Las Vegas to Argentina to the landscapes of Ancient Greek epic poetry, Twelve Clocks explores the connections between song, ancestry, family, loss, and time. If the imagery of the collection hints Troy might be an image of the wrecked Argentine economy under neoliberal economics, the poems eschew the abstractions of politics in favor of a vivid and sensuous lyricism.
The interconnectivity of the poems in Twelve Clocks is mirrored by different elements’ transcendence throughout the collection. The clock that goes missing in one poem turns up in another, characters vanish and reappear, matter destroyed in one poem reoccurs as energy in another, and then matter and energy both go missing. Taken together, the poems confront the literary legacy of Western poetic tradition and our shared future.
“By invoking Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, at the opening of her second volume of poems, Julie Sophia Paegle states an ambitious promise, and then proceeds to deliver, quite effortlessly, a masterwork. Twelve Clocks travels through the timelines of myth and history, allowing us to recognize the arresting patterns of humanity’s vulnerability and its startling resilience to loss, change, and tragedy—hard-won evidence that the body’s science is its impulse to keep light and memory burning. This book is ablaze with wonder.” —Rigoberto González, author of Red-Inked Retablos