In "The Chain" , Sleigh explores the nature of memory and its ability to recast events in contradictory ways as it links individual lives to history. The poet reveals the ways in which the individual consciousness, alternately resisting and embracing its ancestral legacy, seeks to transform, in order to comprehend, the meaning of cultural inheritance. In a series of elegies, portraits, and love poems, he movingly dramatizes the ambiguous nature of truth and the difficulties the moral imagination must overcome in recalling, understanding, and judging the past.
Awards
Short-listed for Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize 1997.



Book Information
ISBN 9780226762418
Author Tom Sleigh
Format Paperback
Page Count 104
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 170g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 16mm * 1mm