Or to Begin Again (Penguin Poets) - Softcover

Lauterbach, Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143115200 ISBN 13: 9780143115205

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2009

Synopsis

Ann Lauterbach's ninth work of poetry, Or to Begin Again, takes its name from a sixteen-poem elegy that resists its own end, as it meditates on the nearness of specific attachment and loss against the mute background of historical forces in times of war. In the center of the book is a twelve-part narrative, "Alice in the Wasteland,"inspired by Lewis Carroll's great character and T.S. Eliot's 1922 modernist poem. Alice is accosted by an invisible Voice as she wanders and wonders about the nature of language in relation to perception. In this volume, Lauterbach again shows the range of her formal inventiveness, demonstrating the visual dynamics of the page in tandem with the powerful musical cadences and imagery of a contemporary master.

About this title

About the Author:

Ann Lauterbach is Ruth and David Schwab III Professor of Language and Literature at Bard College. Her work has received fellowship support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine C. MacArthur Foundation. She has published six collections of poetry, including If in Time: Selected Poems 1975-2000.

From Publishers Weekly:

This ninth collection of poetry finds Lauterbach doing what she does best, anchoring her roving eye and associative thinking among the banalities and raptures of a mature urban life. If her banalities, often comically deployed, are sometimes merely that (There are new blinds on the windows across the way), her raptures, often in the form of physical description, can truly exhilarate and sound like no one else's: as the sun sets, tiny distinctions appear among luminosities, sky, river, car, white fence, yellow lights of passing cars, pale stone of the graves. Less rhapsodic than usual, Lauterbach may apologize for not making meaning, but when she does make it, she reveals a gift for impeccably phrased insight: one falls in love/ with the condition of hope// and falls out of love with its/ cruel replacement, hope.... Highlights of the book include its title poem, a breathtaking, understated 14-part elegy, and the centerpiece, Alice in the Wasteland, a playful semiotic dialogue that finds Carroll's Alice interrogated by an impersonal Voice as she wanders through Eliot's labyrinth of dysfunction. Intelligent but no less deeply feeling, this collection confirms Lauterbach's position as one of the most highly principled and tirelessly innovative poets writing today. (Apr.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0143115200
• ISBN 13: 9780143115205
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 115