Eon: Southern Messenger Poets

Eon is the third and final collection in a conceptual trilogy that includes T.R. Hummer's Ephemeron (2012) and Skandalon (2014). Along with its sister volumes, Eon tells part of the story of the all too short arc of our being in the world and the mystery that follows death. Separated into three sections, this work is a meditation on what humans can know concerning the eternal. Its second section, "Urn," is comprised of a series of poems that read like extended epitaphs, all titled for and informed by someone who has passed away. The collection is shot through with significant corporeal imagery, as well as metaphysical flourishes, and closes with a section that gestures toward the redemptive power of love. In both its style and its multiple references to the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, Emily Dickinson, and Philip Levine (to name a few influences), the collection is deeply aware of the poetic tradition from which it comes and into which it enters.