State of Mind (New American Poetry) - Softcover

Ronk, Martha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557132364 ISBN 13: 9781557132369

Publisher: Sun & Moon Press, 2000

Synopsis

The poems in State of mind are in transit from one state of mind to another as geographies (especially Californian) slide into states of mind, statements of "fact" into memory or metaphor. Just as one necessarily defines oneself against the surrounding world of objects, so in Ronk's poetry landscape do words find meaning as they work against and in conjunction with each other. The poems of this journey through the poet's "state of mind" build by accretion; just as the jumble of Los Angeles's famed Pico Boulevard on any afternoon defines the city's essence, so does this collection, in its linguistic construction, attempt to define its author and her world.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

This subtly nuanced collection suggests both the nature of consciousness and the forms of conventional poetries. Ronk's main preoccupation is the conflict occasioned by a poetry that attempts to apprehend the states of mind of others through an author's hyper-alert attentions. "The question of other minds is the question" is the line that opens the book, and in the collection's first half, called "State of Transition," the poet finds little success in capturing experience. In the next section, the beautifully effusive "Not Just a Pronoun," the "I" takes itself as subject (as if the self is what has been transitioned to), and finds there a teeming, polymorphous scattering of utterance. The final section, "Other Minds," consists of short glosses on literary consciousnesses-Eveline's in a Dubliners story, for example-and finds there, at last, a fluent voice, however compromised its reach.

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sun & Moon Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1557132364
• ISBN 13: 9781557132369
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120