Random Symmetries

This posthumous volume brings together the poems of Tom Andrews, whose untimely death in 2001 cut off a career marked by early achievement and remarkable innovation. It comprises two previously published books, The Brother's Country and The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle, and two unpublished manuscript, closing with two late uncollected poems.

Table of Contents:
Tom Andrews: An Appreciation — Charles Wright • THE BROTHER’S COUNTRY • The Brother’s Country • Song of a Country Priest • May I Read You a Few Lines from Pepy’s Diary? • Four Purgatory Poems • Triptych: Augustine of Hippo • Paul Celan • Animist • After Bobrowski • Thinking of Wallace Stevens • Private Collection • Dr. Farnsworth, a Chripodist, Lived in Ohio, Where He Wrote Only the First Lines of Poems • Postcards to Günter Eich • A Language of Hemophilia • Notes • THE HEMOPHILIAC’S MOTORCYCLE • The Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle • At Burt Lake • Ars Poetica • Praying with George Herbert in Late Winter • A Visit to the Cathedral • Reading Frank O’Hara in the Hospital • Reading the Tao Te Ching in the Hospital • When Comfort Arrives • Evening Song • Hymning the Kanawha • Codeine Diary • Notes • 25 SHORT FILMS ABOUT POETRY • The Death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson • Six One-Line Filmscripts • Doves and Fire • Scenes from a Marriage • The River of Barns • Jacques Derrida and God’s Tsimtsum • Portrait of a Red-Haired Man • the Pornography of Cinema Vérité • Rabelais in the History of Abuse • Intermission: The Discreet Charm of Unfilmable Films • Instructions for the Director of an Unfilmable Film • Joyce Kilmer, in Picardy, Worries about Plagiarism in “Trees” • Brooding Kilmer, a Documentary • William Makepeace Thackeray Follows His Bliss • The Marble • Lecture on Snow • Battle for the Planet of Laurence Sterne • the Mysterious Disappearance of Laurence Sterne • The Mexican Jumping Bean’s Will • Cinema Vérité: The Embrace • Cinema Vérité: William Wordsworth Rejects the Spirit of Carnival • Film Beginning with a Line by Roberto Juarroz • A Map Is Not a Territory • Script for Home Video and Flashlight • In a House Besieged • Cinema Vérité: The Color Wheel • THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT AUGUSTINE • Argument • Left Panel • Central Panel • Right Panel • Notes • LAST POEMS • In the Twentieth Century • North of the Future

Review :
"Tom was singular and luminous, as is his work. The leaves just burst from his fingers. He had that odd stance to the world and its lanugage that made whatever he wrote seem new and just discovered, like treasure hauled up into the sunlight from the ocean floor."