And (American Poets Continuum) [Paperback]

Michael Blumenthal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2009 | Series: American Poets Continuum (Book 116)

Through Michael Blumenthal’s eyes we gain a renewed, childlike wonder at everything from plants, trees, and relationships to the most fundamental word in our vocabulary: AND. Blumenthal uses the conjunction to unify this collection and create a chanting, sonorous rhythm to his work. The result is a book of poems-as-hymns-and-praises.

Michael Blumenthal holds the Mina Hohenberg Darden Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. His other books include the memoir All My Mothers and Fathers (HarperCollins Publishers, 2002), and the poetry collection Dusty Angel (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1999), for which he was awarded the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award.

Blumenthal’s new collection of poems, titled “And,” is the closest that the stoicism of Ecclesiastes will come to getting a 21st-century makeover. In it, there’s a time to laugh and cry, scatter stones and gather them up, and all the rest. There’s no point, though, in toil and hope beyond that. After reading these poems, which are designed with a cosmic sweep, you get the feeling that Blumenthal’s plan is, as in Dylan Thomas’s poem, eventually just to go gentle into that good night: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” be damned.

--THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD

Michael Blumenthal’s stunning new book, And, is an Eliotic celebration of life in the world as continuum and progress. He achieves this through a simple and seductive meditation upon the conjunction, “and,” and the way it enriches the complexity of language as it shapes lived experience.

--The Montserrat Review

 

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Few new books of American poems have more unity—or more happiness—than the latest from Blumenthal: the law professor, memoirist, novelist (Dusty Angel) and psychotherapist has set himself the daunting task of depicting joy in all its varieties. Almost all the poems use long unrhymed lines and long sentences; all the titles begin with And. Many titles read like updates on biblical verse (And Whose Is the Triumph of Stinky Similitude? And Where Is the Rapture of the Seas?), as if Blumenthal were writing his own book of psalms. His extended praise includes the spiritual (he knows// that the air is rife with the anarchy of the possible,/ that the hills are moving, ever so secretly, during/ the night) but also the erotic and the familial: his poems about love almost dare us to call them sentimental. Blumenthal has long made the positive emotions, those that risk sentimentality, his special subject: sometimes the results of that long study turn sublime. Elsewhere, though, Blumenthal fails to find words as exuberant or as satisfying as he wants to remind us that life can be: some readers will thrill, but others will likely balk, at the lustful little angel that inhabits his body, the deliquescence of the air whispering its soothing song. (May)
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About the Author

Michael Blumenthal graduated from Cornell Law School with a J.D. degree in 1974 after studying philosophy and economics at the State U. of New York at Binghamton. Formerly the Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, he is the author of the memoir All My Mothers and Fathers (Harper Collins, 2002), and of the poetry collection Dusty Angel (BOA Editions, 1999). His novel Weinstock Among The Dying, which won Hadassah Magazine's Harold U. Ribelow Prize for the best work of Jewish fiction, has just been re-issued in paperback, and his collection of essays from Central Europe, When History Enters the House, was published in 1998. A frequent translator from German, French and Hungarian, he practices psychotherapy with Anglophone expatriates in Budapest and spends summers at his house in a small village near the shores of Lake Balaton in Hungary. Blumenthal currently holds the Mina Hohenberg Darden Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. He will occupy the Copenhaver Chair at The University of West Virginia Law School for the spring semester 2009.

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd. (May 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934414212
• ISBN-13: 978-1934414217
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 7.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,286,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Blumenthal graduated from the Cornell Law School with a J.D. degree in 1974, after studying philosophy and economics at the State U. of New York at Binghamton. His seventh book of poems, And, was published by BOA Editions in May, 2009. A graduate of Cornell Law School and formerly Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, he is the author of the memoir All My Mothers and Fathers (Harper Collins, 2002), and of Dusty Angel (BOA Editions, 1999). His novel Weinstock Among The Dying, which won Hadassah Magazine's Harold U. Ribelow Prize for the best work of Jewish fiction, has recently been re-issued in paperback, and his collection of essays from Central Europe, When History Enters the House, was published in 1998. A frequent translator from the German, French and Hungarian, he practices psychotherapy with Anglophone expatriates in Budapest and spends summers at his house in a small village near the shores of Lake Balaton in Hungary. In May of 2007, he spent a month in South Africa working with orphaned infant chacma baboons at the C.A.R.E. foundation in Phalaborwa, an experience about which he has written for Natural History and The Washington Post Magazine. He currently holds the Mina Hohenberg Darden Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. He was the featured poet at The Power of Writing Journal Conference in Denver in June of 2008, and currently holds The Copenhaver Visiting Chair of Law at The University of West Virginia College of Law. He can be reached at: www.michael-blumenthal.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nothing More Remarkable Has Ever Smelled of Stars Than This, November 18, 2009

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Mason Broadwell (Dunwoody, GA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: And (American Poets Continuum) (Paperback)

Michael Blumenthal's AND is that rarity among recent books of poetry: a book that functions on two distinct levels of literacy. First it engages the reader aurally, the high lyricism lilting and soothing; next it invites the reader to, at his or her leisure, explore the glades and backwaters of its world by defining words and connecting ideas in a chain that afterwards binds the reader to self-reflection. At times Blumenthal's lyrics, and his delicious juxtaposition of ideas ("Nothing more remarkable has ever smelled of the stars than this," "semicircles of perambulating wings and hoots") seem almost chimerical, but when an author takes 12 years to write a book of poetry, even the improbable becomes likely. His language is (sometimes distractingly) latinate and intellectual--possibly a result of his legal background--but he counters with a poem like "And There Was No More to Give the World," where he says, "in the bayous of Louisiana, the mix was ready to welcome feud victims and alligators." Some readers may find Blumenthal's poetry overly wordy and even sentimental, but he speaks in a clear voice that is both entertaining and intellectually stimulating, and poetry needs more poets like this.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Ambition of Blumenthal's And, November 16, 2009

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R. W. Hunton "R.H." (Bowling Green, Ky) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: And (American Poets Continuum) (Paperback)

Michael Blumenthal's recent book AND attempts to evoke a Whitmanesqe sense of life, full and exuberant, using an Eliot-like, or rather modern, grasp of vocabulary and syntax. At first glance, the occasional four plus syllable Latinate word seemed out of place, pretentious maybe, though in the last poem, "And the World After All Is a Good and Gentle Place," I thought, perhaps after reading the word "tintinnabulation", these words are strange, strange in the way of the world, and here it didn't matter really what the word meant because poetry can be expressed without denotation, thus without language. The foreign word, though not fully comprehended, still communicates euphonic or cacophonic syllables, metrical or improvised rhythm, constant or various, among other elements of the sound of poetry. This particular poem, which can be seen and heard on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z7MgIIyFXY, expresses modern Whitman, though Blumenthal deliberately states "I am not Whitman..." toward the end, and even Whitman was not himself.

Aside from the prologue, which in its definition-like structure alludes to several genuine connotations of the word, particularly "its lust for listmaking" which forever holds its place in American literature with Emerson's essay "The Poet", but in its italicized monologue seems distant and not quite together (I've never known anyone to feel "revivified", and if they did, they did not say this inexpressive word), the poems move very pleasantly, from one to the next, one person said, like a piece of classical music. At least, this is the idea of it. It seems like one person one time said, "In poetry, one can only come so close," and one might agree; in Blumenthal's book, he comes close to the idea several times. Two of my favorite poems are the last two in the book, as he embarks on his long "and-ish" good-bye.

One final thing, "And There Is So Much Ink in the World. And So Much Shit." follows a long, never-ending line of contemporary poems written by English professor / poets about the bad poetry of the world. I find this phenomenon very interesting, and I find the line, at least most recently, beginning with Kenneth Koch's "Fresh Air". The thing I like about Blumenthal's poetry is that, compared to many contemporary poets, he shows a little more restraint, and a genuine appreciation for the words he is using. In fact, in this poem he seems to be satirizing the talkative nature of some of the poems in the current scene: "meanwhile there was so much ink waiting / to be spent, so many trees to cut down, to hell with the screech owl / and the pileated woodpecker, there were stories that needed to be / told, every I crying out its I into the world...". Blumenthal adds a fresh variety, and ambition.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blumenthal - self-titled work?, November 13, 2009

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Whitney Cliburn (Bowling Green, KY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: And (American Poets Continuum) (Paperback)

After dipping my toes into Blumenthal's book of verse and casually wading across his first poem/prologue "And" in which he summarizes all the uses of that said conjunction - how it can "simply introduce the next thought, or the next item on a list, or suggest that there is more to the story" - I wondered if I could really call this poetry. I thought to myself, "This guy's just simply listing what he thinks about an insignificant little word - who cares?" But even as I continued to the next page and the next poem, I wondered if I was missing something - if Blumenthal's seemingly trouble-free words do more than what first meets the eye. Critics have accused Blumenthal of sentimentality, with language that is sometimes too stuffy (i.e. "when it comes to amour, we urge what we can/ out of the resonant silence, the forced tendresse, the dress lifted passionately..."), his terminology too restrictive ("prearranged for davening" and "pileated woodpecker"), and even, too an extent, too philosophical and vague ("what could be better for us than to simply allow the voice to speak,/ whenever it wishes, its little sympathy of regrets and inadequacies?"), etc. etc. and so on and so forth. Like any good poet, though, Blumenthal chooses his words carefully and their stifling flowery-ness is completely intentional. Daringly, Blumenthal dives headfirst into the pool of past exhaustingly romantic poetry and rather than swimming along on the surface with those other poets who have been accused of sentimentality (i.e. Whitman, Frost, Joyce Kilmer), Blumenthal sinks to new depths. The themes and messages hidden underneath the murky exterior of his poems jump out at you ever so subtly and force you to look inward, remembering forgotten things about yourself, nature, God, love, sex, fate, free will, and really -above all else- the possibility of something more. You will find that "and," that deceptively plain three-character conjunction, "[carries] many times its own weight," "has its own priorities," and makes "whatever has been said thus far [suffer] from congenital incompleteness." Certainly, it should be noted that Blumenthal has much in common with the title of his work.