Living Wills: New and Selected Poems - Hardcover

MacDonald, Cynthia

4.62

13 ratings by Goodreads

9780394585031: Living Wills: New and Selected Poems

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394585038 ISBN 13: 9780394585031

Publisher: Knopf, 1991

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Chosen as one of The New York Times Book Review's Notable Poetry Books of the Year for 1991, Living Wills is at once an arresting collection of Cynthia Macdonald's new poems and a substantial selection from her four earlier books.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Back Cover:

"She is one of the strongest, most interesting poets now writing precisely because she understands that ours is a moment of radical doubt. And she has fashioned a highly original, exuberant poetry...Since the publication of her first book in 1972, Macdonald's work has probed contemporary darkness with elegant word play, broad puns, wide-ranging allusions, dreamlike stories, and eerie fables...If some contemporary poems seem like short stories cut to their essence, several of Macdonald's read like distilled novels...Throughout the book, but particularly in the newest poems, the poet works toward the terrible knowledge of acts and consequences."

Robert Schultz, The Hudson Review

"Living Wills indicates not only what this poet has done over the past twenty years but new directions and powers...Ms. Macdonald's work has always had a gorgeous, almost baroque quality...The newest poems here, under the title 'The Precise Shape of a Wave ,' constitute two-thirds of a full-length book of poems, and they are the best in the collection. 'Separations' is a remarkable poem about familial love and loss, 'At the Round Earth's Imagin'd Corners' is a tour de force, and 'Rose Magpie and Magpie Rose' reveals the poet's new, brighter, richer, more varied palette."

Liz Rosenberg, The New York Times Book Review

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.